Rewind
by sol invictus
Summary: The twins come across a strange device in Arwin's office and are sent back almost 30 years to when their father was a just boy when they accidentally turn it on. Getting back to their own time won't be easy.
1. Chapter 1

"I still can't believe you're wearing that shirt, Zack," Cody said with a hint of disgust after Zack took his jacket off and slung it over his shoulder. "We live in Boston for crying out loud."

"Yes, I'm aware of where we live. Can I help it that my favorite player happens to play for Miami? I don't think so. I'm pretty sure I've told you that each and every time I wear this shirt and you bring it up. Like this morning, for instance. And then again after fifth period. "

Cody decided to not mention the fact that he wasn't Zack's favorite player before he took his talents to South Beach and got a ring. "Whatever. It's just wrong, that's all."

"And I don't care." Zack led the way from the elevator to the suite's door. "What smells so good, Mom?" Zack asked as he and Cody came into the suite. He left Cody to close the door and followed his nose directly into the kitchen and found his mother cleaning up the aftermath of a surprisingly successful baking experience.

"I'm making Arwin some cookies since he was nice enough to come up here and fix the garbage disposal before he left for his long weekend," she told her son as she pulled two racks of steaming cookies from the oven and set them atop the stove burners. Zack reached out to snatch one and she batted his hand away with a pot holder. "You can have one as soon as they cool," she said.

"You know, Mom, you could have just smiled at him and not have had to go through all the trouble of baking anything. I'm sure that memory would last longer than the cookies would."

"Maybe not, Cody," Zack laughed, "he might put them under glass and stare at them for years."

"Be nice, Zack. Arwin is a very sweet man. Slightly eccentric and rather weird, but still a sweet man." She gave Zack _the look_ until he was chastised.

"Sorry, Mom. I know he is. It's just that...I don't know, he's like a little puppy hopping around your feet, hoping you'll pet him." Cody snickered at Zack's very likely unintentional innuendo.

"I'm not going to pet him in any way, shape, or form, thank you very much. This is just a little gift to thank him for going out of his way when he could have waited until Tuesday." Carey then shot Cody a look telling him that she also got the double meaning of Zack's words and did not approve.

"I bet he'll love it when you bring them down to him, Mom."

"I'm sure he would but I'm not going to. This took a lot longer than I thought it would and I have to run a few errands before I go on tonight, so you two are going to be my delivery boys."

"Do we at least get paid like delivery boys?" Zack asked hopefully.

"I'll pay you in cookies," she told him before letting her eyes run to the clock. "Actually, I'll give you each ten bucks to blow in the arcade if you also go to the bank for me and drop my tip money in our account. That'll save me a trip."

"Can we do that?" Cody asked as he eyed the cooling cookies.

"I don't see why not. I've had Maddie deposit my check a few times. I don't think they really care as long as they're taking money in and not giving it out. If they won't do it for some reason, I'll just take care of it tomorrow."

Carey pulled a plate from the cabinet and began piling the cookies on it, smiling to herself as Zack's face fell with each one that left the tray. When she had a sizable pile on the plate, she covered it with cling wrap. "You two can have the rest," she told them and they dove in.

She washed her hands and scurried to her purse and pulled out an envelop and a deposit slip. Carey quickly counted the pile of bills, pulled out two tens, and wrote on the slip before handing the lot to Cody.

"People actually gave you almost two hundred dollars to hear you sing?" he asked incredulously after looking at the slip.

"I know it's hard for you to believe, but yes, people do enjoy hearing me sing. Not everyone likes that crap stuff kids your age listen to."

"I think you mean _rap_, Mom."

"No, Zack, I meant crap," she grinned.

"How long have you been saving this money up, Mom? A year?" he shot back.

"Since Monday, thank you very much." Carey pulled a sticky note from the desk and scribbled a hasty note on it and stuck it to the wrapped cookies. "Okay boys, I've got to run. I'll be back at the usual time." She leaned down and kissed each of them on the top of their heads. "Love you, don't kill each other, do your homework, and please try to get to the bank before it closes."

"We'll get there," Cody promised. "After we take your love offering to Arwin first, of course."

"If he's not there can we eat the cookies?"

"He'll be there, Zack. He told me that he had some work to do on, I don't know, whatever he's working on and would be there until around six."

"Okay, Mom, we got it," Zack told her and Carey grabbed her coat from the hook and dashed out the door, flinging a blown kiss over her shoulder.

"You want to stop by the library with me on the way back from the bank, Zack?"

"Now why on earth would I want to do that?"

"Because I need to drop some books off and it's only two blocks away from the bank."

"Probably not."

"I'll just put them in the box outside. Will you walk with me?"

"Yeah, I guess," Zack finally said. "But no going inside. You spend too much time in there as it is."

"I'll use the drop box, I promise," Cody said, picking up his backpack from the edge of the couch and slipping his arms through the straps. "Whenever you're ready."

Moments later the twins were out the door, Cody carrying Carey's present and Zack with a handful of the leftovers in a paper towel. They waited at the elevator and Cody watched his brother eat two of them before taking one for himself. The doors opened and they stepped inside and Zack reached for the button to take them to the lobby.

"No, we do what Mom asked first, then we play games," Cody told him as he pushed the button to take them to the basement and Arwin's office.

"Oh come on, it won't take that long. We'll just play a few games and then do the rest of it."

"Nope. I know how you operate. We go to Arwin's and then to the bank and library, and _then _we go to the arcade."

"You are no fun at all," Zack said with a fake pout.

"Maybe not, but I have the money in my pocket so it really doesn't even matter." Zack rolled his eyes and took another bite from a cookie.

"Fine. Let's just make it quick. I want to be done before the tourists all get back here and clog the place up."

They made two stops before the elevator came to rest at the basement level. The doors dinged and they stepped out and wove their way through the carts of laundry and various supplies that kept the hotel running. They passed the giant laundry and caught a strong whiff of bleach and detergent before they rounded the corner and found the door labeled _Maintenance Office._

They knocked on the door's jam before pushing their way inside into Arwin's domain. The room was longer than it was wide with walls of mismatched tools, boxes of parts stacked haphazardly, and dozens of partially completed projects littering every inch of available space. And junk. Lots of junk. Zack whistled as he took in the sight.

"I think it's gotten worse since the last time we were down here," he said softly.

"No kidding. I'd say it looks like a bomb went off in here but that would be disrespectful to bombs," Cody replied as he stepped around what appeared to be a two foot tall stack of ancient invoices.

"Hey Arwin," Zack called, "you in here somewhere? Maybe under something?" Zack ducked to look beneath a workbench and came up sneezing and with a dusty cobweb on his shoulder. "Maybe he left early."

"Maybe. Arwin?" Cody bellowed as he picked the web from his brother. "Should we take them to his house?"

"Do you remember how to get to his house? I don't."

"No, not really. I could put us in the neighborhood but that's it," Cody admitted. "We'll just leave them here. He'll find them in the morning."

"Or in six years," Zack said as he gestured around the room.

"Or then. We'll just put them on his desk. If we can find it, of course."

The twins began swimming through the mess and looking for anything that might possibly be a desk. Cody spotted a chair buried beneath a collection of coats and they angled in that direction. Cody stepped behind the chair and smoothed out the top of the coats and tried to settle the plate on top.

"I think I got it," he said, "we'll just ask Arwin if he found them the next time we-"

"Will you look at this?" Zack interrupted. Cody turned to see that Zack had wandered a few feet away and was picking through a pile of letters he'd found. He was holding up an empty envelop and waving it around.

"What?"

"When was the last time you saw a twenty-five cent stamp?"

"I'm pretty sure the answer is never," Cody told him. "Those are from before we were born. Heck, probably even before we were _thought _of."

"That's what I thought, too. How long has Arwin worked here?"

"I honestly have no idea. Judging by that, at least twenty years."

Zack skirted around the corner of what was possibly a table to another pile of assorted junk. Curiosity overtook him and he pulled back an oddly uncluttered sheet and uncovered a small box made of metal and dense black plastic. Wires and buttons covered one half of its surface and the rest was taken up by a darkened screen.

"What the heck is _this_?" Zack wondered as he looked it over. "Looks like Arwin is trying to beat Microsoft to the punch and make his own new Xbox."

"I doubt he's making a game console, Zack." Cody came over as Zack picked the box up for a better view.

"Wow, it's kinda heavy. This must be where the disc goes in," he said as he pressed a recessed button.

"Zack, I don't think you should-"

"Awesome," Zack whispered as the screen lit up with a jumble of rapidly cascading code. "It's like _The Matrix_."

"Maybe you should stop touching things and put it down already," Cody cautioned and took a step back.

"Nah, it's fine now. See? It stopped doing that scrolling thing." Cody peered over Zack's shoulder and saw that he was right.

"I still think you should put it down. Arwin's inventions have a bad habit of exploding."

"Fine, fine. But we're going to ask him what this thing is when we see him because it looks cool." Zack placed the box back on the table. "I'll turn it off and we'll...oh check it out! It's a touch screen like our phones." He ran a fingertip across the surface and the numbers flew by in a blur. Zack flicked his finger again and the display came to a stop and showed two blue buttons.

"Calibrate or Confirm, Cody? I say Confirm." Zack waggled his finger over the second button and playfully grinned at Cody.

"Don't you dare press either of them! You'll probably break it and it'll melt or something." He tried to grab Zack's hovering finger and pull it away from the screen but missed and hit his brother's wrist. The button's border highlighted and a smiley face appeared in the center.

A distant _click _echoed from inside the box a split second before a whirring sound filled the room. The box hummed and vibrated and sent the nearest pile of junk shaking off the table.

"What did you do?" Cody yelled over the din.

"You hit my hand!" Zack screeched back as the lights in the room brightened and dimmed irregularly before going out. Yellow bolts of electricity arced out of the box and zipped around them.

"Let go of it and let's get out of here!"

"I can't!"

The air around the twins became thick and the distinct smell of ozone filled the room. Every hair on their bodies stood on end and their skin felt too tight as a small point of light rose from the box, remaining connected to it by a razor-thin filament. It shimmered and spun, casting a fierce glow over everything. The point expanded until they both were standing inside of it.

Screams filled Cody's ears but he wasn't sure if they were his own or Zack's. He looked down at his hand and his eyes widened in terror when he realized he could see grass through it.

"Make it stop! I want to get out of here!" he shouted over the noise.

"I can't!" Zack repeated just before a thunderclap smashed their ears and everything went absolutely dark.

_I've been bouncing this story idea around in my head for at least five years and finally started working on it late last year. It's been slow-going but after a gentle prodding from OwlHero I decided to go ahead and start it up instead of waiting until I had each plot point ironed out and every line written._

_I'd also like to take the opportunity to give a shout out to my Louisville Cardinals for getting the #1 overall seed in the NCAA tournament and wish them luck in bringing the title back to the 'ville. It's been a while!_

_Let me know what you think of the story._

_Sol Invictus_


	2. Chapter 2

Cody groaned and rolled over and cranked one eye open. _This is not my bed _ran through his mind as his brain tried to comprehend why he was laying on his stomach in a damp field at either dawn or dusk instead of under a nice cotton sheet and a down comforter. Something happened, he remembered that much, but couldn't recall what it was. He edged up to his elbows and opened his other eye. "Zack? Where are you?"

"Over here," he heard from behind him. Cody worked his way to his feet and followed the voice. A bird tweeted as he knelt beside his brother. "You okay, Cody?"

"Yeah, I think so. I'm a little dizzy and I have a headache."

"Me too. What happened?"

"I don't know. I remember falling. I remember landing, too," Cody told him as he rubbed the small knot on the back of his skull. "Aside from that? Nothing. Wait," he said as the cobwebs in his brain began to clear, "we were in Arwin's office-"

"Where is it?" Zack spun to his knees and looked around.

"Where's what?"

"The thing! The...box. Do you see it?" Zack got up and started walking around the field. He left footprints in the dew as he walked in a widening circle.

Cody walked with him as things started to come back to him. Arwin's office. Some metal box. Lots of lights. Falling. "Where are we?"

"I have no idea. Some field. Maybe a park or something."

"It doesn't look familiar to me at all. Check that out." Cody pointed to their right and Zack saw a swing set and some monkey bars. "I've never seen those before in my life."

Zack stopped in his tracks as he looked at the equipment. The swings at the park near the hotel looked nothing like those. Where was the slide that was supposed to be on the other side? And the ladder to the little fort that always smelled like wet dog inside?

"Where the hell are we?" Zack asked.

Cody stood with his hands resting on his hips as he put two and two together. They were in Arwin's office and now they weren't. They'd been messing with some sort of invention and now they were in a damp field. "Zack?"

"Yeah?"

"I think Arwin built some kind of teleporter."

"And it actually worked," Zack said wryly as he started back to where they'd landed.

"I was thinking the exact same thing," Cody admitted. "There it is, over near that tree." Zack followed Cody's finger and saw the glint of sunlight reflecting off metal.

"Let's get it and get out of here. Wherever _here _is."

"We're probably a mile or two from the hotel."

"I don't think so, Cody," Zack told him as they stood before the box. It was embedded a few inches into the soft earth.

"Why's that?"

"The air smells too clean for Boston. And why does it look like eight in the morning? It was almost four in the afternoon when we went down to the office."

Cody went quiet as he pondered the two points Zack had raised. He breathed deep and didn't notice any of the usual smells he associated with the city. No exhaust, no pollution. No smells at all, really. Just relatively clean air. A strong, gusty front could possibly explain that but it couldn't explain the time difference and that bothered him.

While Cody thought, Zack was pulling the box from the ground. He brushed the dirt from its cover and heard rattling from the inside. He looked up and shook his head. "That doesn't sound good."

"No it doesn't," Cody agreed.

"Arwin is probably going to kill us when we get back to the hotel."

"He won't but you already know Mom will."

"True."

Zack wiped the dirt away from the corner with what he assumed was the button a bit more thoroughly and gave it a bit of pressure. He frowned when nothing happened and pressed it a second time. He cursed under his breath and gave it one last touch. "Great. We did break it. Give me your backpack." Cody slid it from his shoulders and unzipped it. Zack slid it inside and gently nestled it among the books and whatever else Cody had in there. "There we go, buddy." he zipped it and patted it before handing it back.

"Why do I have to carry it?"

"Because it's your backpack. Now let's figure out where we are. After we do that we can figure out how much trouble we're going to be in when we finally get home." They started walking toward a road in the distance and Zack pulled his phone from pocket and unlocked the screen.

"We might be in Kazakhstan," Cody mused as they walked.

"And where, exactly, might that be?"

"Kind of under Russia and near China. If I'm right, it should be early morning over there right now. Or right here, if that's where we are."

"Man...if you're right...we might as well not even go home. We are going to be in so much trouble. I can hear it now," Zack said as he restarted his phone after not getting a signal, "'so what'd you boys do while I was at work?' 'Not much, Mom, just messed with one of Arwin's things and ended up in Chalkstan.' 'Oh yeah? You're both grounded until you're fifty.' Yeah, that is not going to end well."

"Kazakhstan," Cody corrected.

"Whatever. And why can't I get a signal? Stupid Sprint piece of junk. Try your phone."

Cody pulled his out and discovered he had the same problem as Zack. "Nothing. Maybe the teleporter scrambled our phones."

"Wonderful," Zack exclaimed to the grass and trees, "now we broke our phones, too. This is just getting better and better. We are so dead."

"Just calm down, Zack. We probably aren't in Asia. We probably just teleported ourselves a few miles away from the hotel and it knocked us out for the night. I do feel pretty rested."

"No, if we slept in a park in Boston, we'd have woken up in our underwear since we'd have been robbed. Also," Zack continued, "if we were gone overnight, Mom would have every police officer in the state looking for us. Every square inch of grass would be covered with cops and I don't see any."

"Good point. I guess let's just follow this road and find a phone. Once we do that, we'll either call Mom or call the American Embassy and figure out how to get home."

"I guess that's as good a plan as any. Let's go."

They followed the road and it wound through a park. They passed a pair of Little League baseball fields and the obligatory concession stand between the two. The concrete widened out into a large parking lot before narrowing again to slink past a handful of tennis courts. The fact that the signs were written in English and not Cyrillic was a small comfort.

"You want to know another reason we're not anywhere near Boston, Cody?" Zack asked as they rounded a curve and saw their road run into a bigger street a few hundred yards away.

"What?"

"It barely reached the sixties earlier today, right? Or yesterday or whatever?"

"Yeah, that sounds about right."

"It's already a lot warmer than that. Cody, it's maybe eight in the morning and I'm starting to break a sweat walking. If it's not at least eighty already I'll eat that box in your backpack."

Cody hadn't noticed it but his brother was right. The higher the sun rose in the sky, the hotter he was getting. He wiped a hand across his brow and saw that there was a sheen of sweat on his fingers. Now that he was aware of it, he noticed that the back of his knees were starting to dampen a bit inside his jeans. Cody frowned and tried to figure out how to add this bit of new information into the puzzle.

They walked in silence until they reached the main road, Cody lost in his thoughts while Zack kicked a stone ahead of him. They stopped and looked both ways. Zack motioned to their left and Cody shrugged. One way was as good as the other to him. They crossed the street and walked through some wet grass until they reached the sidewalk. A boxy car passed them and Cody struggled to read the name on its rear end.

"That was an Escort, Cody. Ford Escort," Zack told him.

"It was definitely not an Escort," he rebutted.

"Yeah it was. An old one," Zack said as he really looked at the houses on each side of the road for the first time.

"It looked almost brand new."

"Maybe the guy has a thing for hatchbacks and restored it?"

"I guess," Cody said with a shrug. They passed two blocks streets before Zack spoke again. "You know what I haven't seen any of? Those little satellite tv dishes."

Cody scanned the houses in front of them and quickly came to the conclusion that Zack was right again. "I also haven't seen any new cars around here. Maybe we're just in a poorer neighborhood or they're all in garages." Zack didn't have a reply to that and Cody was beginning to feel unease spread through his body. Something wasn't right but he couldn't figure out what it was. He shook his head in frustration.

The twins crested a small hill and saw that their street crossed another a few blocks ahead of them. Across it lay a gas station, its pumps visible but the sign hidden by the distance and a large tree in a front yard. Their eyes met and it was silently decided that would be their target. There'd be a phone in there and they'd see about getting home.

Cody stopped dead in his tracks when they were across the street from the gas station. He blinked and rubbed his eyes but the sign still read _Gulf_. His eyes became even bigger when he noticed the price on it. Despite proof standing twenty feet high in the air filling in the blanks around the other things he'd seen in the last few minutes, Cody still couldn't believe it.

"Tell me that doesn't say what I think it does," he said quietly.

"It says unleaded is a dollar twenty a gallon."

Cody leaned against a light pole and shook his head in absolute disbelief. He pushed his hair back and glanced up at the sign again, hoping it would suddenly read _BP or Exxon _and offer gas for a lot more. "We are so screwed. So, so, so screwed."

"This can't be possible," Zack echoed. "No way. Absolutely no way. This has to be some colossal joke. Did we just get _Punk'd_?"

"I wish that's what it was. Come on, let's go in."

"What? Why? What's the point? We can't exactly go in there and ask to use their phone to call home since we probably aren't born yet."

"Oh, we definitely aren't born yet, I can tell you that," Cody said as he glanced up at the gas prices again. "And depending on when we are in time, Mom and Dad might not be born yet, either. They should be but I'm not sure."

Zack uttered a rich string of profanity and threw his hands in the air. "Then what are we going to do? How the hell are we going to get home?"

"What we're going to do," Cody said as he stepped closer and got in Zack's face, "is calm down and quit making a scene in the middle of the street where everyone can see us. After we do that, we're going to go inside the little store and check things out."

"Okay. Sorry," Zack apologized after a deep breath. "Let's do it."

"You're cool?"

"As cool as I can be considering we're stuck like twenty years in the past."

"Good enough." Cody led the way and they crossed to the station's convenience store. He pulled the door open and winced as the smell of cigarette smoke assaulted his nose. Long rows of glass cases lined the walls and they were filled with bottles of soda and beer. Cody pulled one door open and reached inside to grab a Mountain Dew.

"Oh look, the retro logo," Zack said with quiet sarcasm. Cody couldn't help but grin. He pulled out another and handed it to Zack. They walked back to the front of the store and had to stop on a dime to avoid running over a little boy dashing across their path.

"Did he have a rat tail?" Zack whispered in Cody's ear.

"Yes he did," Cody replied and Zack snorted loudly.

"Outstanding." Cody could tell by the humor creeping back into his brother's attitude that he truly had calmed down and was back in control of himself. "Wow. Just wow."

They reached the counter and set their drinks on the smudged glass. As the cashier punched buttons instead of swiping them in front of a laser, Cody noticed and wondered when bar code scanners came around. He saw the man look quizzically at his brother and stepped to the side to block Zack from the man's gaze.

"Oh, and a newspaper, too," Cody said as he added one to their goods. The young man just nodded and punched another button. Cody caught the date on the paper before it went into the bag and nearly cried out.

"Dollar twenty-three," he told the twins. The low price shook Cody as he took his wallet from his pocket. He started to pull out a five but stopped abruptly and paid with two singles instead. He got his change, the bag, and thanked the man before all but yanking Zack out of the store.

"What was that about?"

"Not here. I'll tell you in a minute."

"Will you at least tell me what year it is?" Cody pulled the folded paper from the bag and showed Zack the date. "Wow. June 3rd, 1986." Zack shook his head as Cody put the paper away.

"1986."

"Shit," Zack said again in disbelief as they headed back to the park. "So we didn't go straight back in time. We went a few months extra. That definitely explains why it's already so hot."

Now that they knew they weren't in their own time, things that their brains had unconsciously filtered out for being wrong were noticeable. A woman with huge hair and bigger earrings walking down the sidewalk. A boy with shorts that were no longer than Zack's boxers riding by on a bike. Large antennae on many roofs on both sides of the street. Zack shook his head as the enormity of it all began to sink in deeper.

They were back at the park in ten minutes and found a bench in the middle of a rather secluded patch of grass. Cody opened the bottle and nearly winced at the overly sugary taste of his drink. He swallowed and leaned back against the bench.

"So are you going to tell me why you just about ripped my arm off in the store now?"

Cody took another sip before answering. "The clerk was looking at your shirt," he said and went quiet before adding, "remember when we are."

"The Miami Heat don't exist yet," Zack said and leaned forward and put his head in his hands.

"Got it in one," Cody said. "But wait, there's more."

"Get it over with."

"Let me see your wallet." Zack took it out and opened it up and revealed a collection of ones and two fives. "Looks quite a bit like mine," Cody said as he showed Zack the contents of his own wallet. "And let's see what Mom wanted us to take to the bank."

"I'd forgotten about that."

"So had I until just a few minutes ago." Cody pulled out the envelop and rifled through the stack of bills. "We have about two hundred thirty dollars between us and we can't use half of it."

"What?"

"The ones are good but the fives and tens are totally different than what they use here and now."

"So we can't use them?"

"Well, technically it wouldn't be illegal but it'll give us away in no time if we're not careful."

"That's not even fair!"

"Tell me about it. I'm still trying to figure it out all out in my head but there's a chance we could pass the tens and the one twenty if we're really careful and sneaky. And lucky. Anyway, that leads us to a bigger problem."

"What we're going to do if we're stuck here?"

"Exactly. Even if we can use all of our money, and even though some things are a lot cheaper now than they were in our day, it won't take long before we're broke. What do we do then?"

"We'll either have to get jobs or turn ourselves in and make sure we stay together in foster care."

"No matter what, we have to make sure we fit in or things could get really bad." Cody looked at Zack's Miami shirt again. "That has to go. Today."

Zack set his bottle on the ground and pulled the shirt over his head. He started to turn it inside out and put it back on but stopped and laid it on his bare shoulder. "It's cooler this way," he told his brother and waited for a comment about not wearing any sunscreen. It didn't come and he watched a man walking his dog across the grass move out of earshot before he spoke again. "Do you think you could fix the box?"

"Honestly? I don't know, Zack. Electronics aren't my thing. I know how they work in theory but..." Admitting that felt like a giant cloud hovered over his head. "I'll have to try, though," he added after he saw what might have been despair forming in Zack's eyes. "I'll need a quiet, dry space and some tools."

"We'll keep our eyes open today." Each boy became lost in his own thoughts for a few minutes as the park began to gradually fill up. More glances than he liked began to land on them as Zack finished his drink and tossed the bottle in a nearby garbage can. "We should go. We stick out like a sore thumb right now."

"You're right. We need new clothes to fit in. And lunch, too. I'm hungry." Cody patted his belly as he got up and slid the backpack over his shoulders. They started back down the road and soon came to the junction they'd seen earlier but instead of going left and to the gas station, they went to the right.

"So what do we know about the 80s?" Zack asked once the silence had become deafening.

"Reagan is President right now. Bush is the VP."

"_What_?"

"No, not that one. His dad."

"Oh. I was going to say."

"Let's see...the Commies are still our enemy for another three years or so. I think the country is just coming out of a recession. What about you?"

"Louisville won the college tournament earlier this year. The Celtics win the NBA title this year. Probably in about a week or so."

"That doesn't really help us."

"Hey, you know what's important to you, I know what's important to me." Cody grinned and ceded the point to his brother. "And I might have just thought of a way for us to make some money if we're here long enough."

"How?"

"Betting. Like I said, the C's win it this year, the Lakers get the next two, then Detroit gets two, Jordan gets the Bulls six of the next eight...need I go on? Because I can."

"That might be a very good idea," Cody admitted and Zack beamed. "The only problem with it is that it might not work if our being here starts to change things."

"I don't think the two of us can make a change that big, Cody. We're not that special."

"It's the Butterfly Effect."

"That movie was awful."

"Not what I'm talking about. Basically, one small change can mushroom into something huge."

"We're going to have to do something, you know."

"I know we do, but we need to be careful. This isn't some movie, this is real life."

_And there's chapter two. I had this almost ready to go within a few days of the last chapter but March Madness got in the way. Which brings me to the nice anonymous comment someone left me about no one caring about the Cards. No, they may not outside of Louisville but we do here. A lot. So I don't know if that was supposed to piss me off or what but it didn't. All I could think of was that it must have come from some butthurt anon UK fan and I laughed._

_Anyway, I'm going to try to update this story every week to ten days and hopefully still find time to post other things as well. Thanks for reading._


	3. Chapter 3

The boys walked along the sidewalk as they made their way through the maze of residential streets in the hope that they'd eventually find a larger road and the stores that it would surely bring.

"I'm beginning to think we went the wrong way, Cody. We've seen nothing but houses, houses, and more houses. Some were blue, others were white, and a few were yellow. But that's all. Maybe we should turn around and go ask the guy at the gas station for some directions."

"No, I think we're doing okay. We'll find a shop soon enough." Cody grabbed the straps of his backpack and readjusted the weight.

"You're liking the scenic tour, huh?" Zack asked with a laugh. "It's a lot more peaceful than Boston, I'll give you that."

"Well, yeah, it is nice. We've walked about a dozen blocks and haven't heard a single police siren or almost been run over once. It's like the anti-Boston. But that said, I think it might be better if we don't go back or stop someone and ask directions."

"And why might that be?"

"The more we talk with people here, the more likely we are to do or say something that will give us away."

"I think I might have to pull older brother privilege and veto that idea, Cody. If we're stuck here for any length of time, we're going to have to talk to people."

"I still think it's not a good idea."

"I'm not saying that we go out and have a long talk with somebody about whatever book you just read or whatever, but we'll be fine. We're kids. If we say something weird we can just blame it on being from Boston. It could be a 'our slang is different than your slang' kind of thing."

Cody went quiet as he pondered Zack's words. "Okay, you have a point," he finally said. "As long as we don't get into a discussion of current events I guess we'll be fine."

"Past events," Zack joked.

"You know what I mean." Cody gently elbowed his brother and the issue was settled.

Their stroll soon enough brought them around a wide curve and the houses on their left peeled away and became a strip of businesses. A tire store sat across from another Gulf station and those were flanked by a massive box of a building in the center of a huge slab of asphalt and patched concrete. The commercial zone stretched on with other buildings they couldn't make out in the distance but the boys had found their target.

"K-mart? Wow," Zack said with a derisive laugh.

"Tell me about it," Cody echoed as they crossed the street and walked across the parking lot toward the building. "We really don't have that many options."

"Have we ever even been _in _a K-mart before? I've only seen them in old movies."

"I doubt it. Maybe when we were really little and hopping around the country. Put your shirt back on, by the way."

"Sure thing, Mom," Zack rolled his eyes and raised his arms and slid the inside-out shirt over his chest.

"We need to get some deodorant as well as new clothes," Cody announced with a wrinkled nose as the wind blew a hint of Zack's underarm to him.

Zack pushed his arms and head through their respective holes and turned to Cody. "What are you trying to say, buddy?"

"It's hot and we're going to sweat if we walk around all day. I'd rather not smell like a Dumpster fire while I try to fix the box and I'd _really_ like it if you didn't." Cody kept a straight face for a few seconds before a smile broke through.

"Maybe one day you'll hit the Big P and you'll start to smell like a man, too," Zack retorted.

"Oh boy...I can't wait for that." Cody shook his head and both boys laughed as they walked the final few yards to the front of the building. They walked in the doors, having to push them open by hand, Cody noted, and took in the sights. A cart corral sat to their immediate right, full of weathered plastic and metal carts. "Jeez, it's like Wal-mart, but more cluttered and dirtier."

They disappeared into the throng of shoppers and skirted a display of gigantic jewelry and a rack of sunglasses that could have come directly from the set of _Miami Vice_. A garbled announcement about a prescription in the pharmacy boomed down from the dusty speakers in the ceiling. A few moments of wandering brought them to the pharmacy and an aisle with row upon row of deodorant sticks.

"Which one?"

"I don't care, Cody. Just grab whichever is cheapest and isn't pink."

"Sounds good. It's not your usual Axe stuff that smells like feet but it'll work," Cody said softly as he picked randomly from the shelf.

"It smells like chocolate."

"No, trust me, it doesn't. Chocolate feet, maybe."

"Whatever." Zack led him back out of the aisle and was heading to the other end of the store when Cody pulled on his sleeve. "What?"

"We should get a toothbrush." He pointed to the pegs in the next aisle.

"We aren't going to be here that long, Cody. We won't need one."

"I might not be able to fix it right away," he whispered back. "It can't hurt and this way we won't have to come back here if it takes a while."

Zack flicked his eyes to the price tags on the hangers and nodded. "They're cheap. Get a couple and a little travel-size thing of toothpaste." Cody did and Zack led him away before he could find anything else they might potentially need.

They traversed the store, walking past the sporting goods department, before Zack's attention was caught by a long row of waist-high tiered wooden racks. Curious, he turned on a dime and crossed right in front of Cody's path.

"Hey! Watch it. Where are you going?"

"I want to see what's over there," Zack told him and Cody followed with a shrug. "Will you look at this? Cassettes!" Zack said as he pulled one from the display. "Why is it in this big plastic thing?" He showed Cody the nearly foot-long thick plastic case that nearly completely entombed the small cassette.

"That's probably the height of 1986 anti-theft tech right there," Cody told him after looking around. "We're still a long way away from those little electronic tags."

"Wow. How do you get it off? Bolt cutters?" he pulled on the plastic and was surprised when it didn't move more than a millimeter.

"I'm sure they have a key for it. Now come on, unless you're planning on getting Madonna's newest tape."

"Nah, I'm good. She was hot back in the day though," Zack said as he slid the cassette and its case back into the display after one more look. "Let's go."

The boys passed another few departments as they angled their way through the store. Soon enough they found their way to the boys' department and waded into the clothes.

"It's a wonder that the US didn't die out after the eighties," Zack muttered as he picked through a rack of t-shirts.

"Huh?"

"The clothes, Cody. They're so ugly I can't believe that anyone got laid wearing them." Zack pulled out a particularly terrible sleeveless shirt as an example. Bright neon colors clashed over white and black checkered squares. As further evidence, he pulled a black mesh shirt from the rack with his other hand. He stuffed them back on the rack with faux disgust

"We are in the kids' clothes, you know. I'm pretty sure that getting kids laid wasn't a priority when they made the clothes."

"Did you see the mens' rack when we passed by those? They're exactly the same, only bigger."

"And more expensive. Give me that shirt you just had. Both of them, actually. I kind of like them."

"I am not surprised," Zack said as he pulled the shirts back off the rack and handed them to his brother.

Cody looked at the tags and put them both over his arm. "Our size and, more importantly, they're on clearance for next to nothing."

"Two cents would be massively overpaying for those shirts, Cody," Zack snorted. They picked out a handful of the shirts that offended them the least and moved on. "Oh these are even worse," he said as he picked up a pair of shorts and held them over his jeans. "I'm not wearing these."

"Then you will be wearing jeans in the summer. Me? I'd rather walk around looking like I stole my shorts from Daisy Duke's closet than sweat through some denim."

Zack frowned as he looked over the piles. "Fine. I'm going to go try these on and see how bad they are," he said as he picked up a pair of black cotton shorts. He walked over to the changing rooms and disappeared behind a door while Cody waited outside. An older lady pushed an orange cart by and smiled at him. He smiled back and turned away, not wanting to get into a conversation if he could help it.

"Everything okay in there?" Cody asked after a minute had passed.

"I'm coming," Zack said and opened the door. "I guess they aren't that bad. If I pull them down a little, they'll almost reach my fingers." He dropped the shorts a few inches on his hips and was nearly satisfied.

"What kind of underwear are you wearing?"

"Dammit," Zack said as he pulled his shirt up and revealed another Miami Heat logo on his boxers.

"Don't you have anything without them on it?"

"Not _with _me," he groused.

"Change out of those and I'll be right back." Zack went back in the room and Cody walked a few aisles over. He returned just as Zack came out of the dressing room with a package in his hand.

"White briefs?" Zack exclaimed. "What are we, five?"

"No, but these are cheap. Do you want to look cool or eat?"

"Fruit of the Looms it is," Zack said and shook his head, resigned.

They gathered up their new clothes and headed back through the store to the checkouts after picking up a package of socks. Cody put a hand out and stopped Zack while he scanned the registers. Zack's attention was momentarily held by a rack of candy but soon enough he wanted to know why they were standing in the middle of the floor while people walked by all around them.

"What are you doing?"

"Looking at the cashiers."

"Why?"

"I'm trying to figure out who's paying the least attention so we can try to, you know..."

"Oh, right." His eyes joined Cody's.

"I'm open, sweetie," a voice called out to their left. Zack looked over and a woman was motioning to them, waving them in her direction.

"Over there, Cody."

"But I'm-"

"We don't want to look suspicious," Zack whispered in a sing-song voice as he grabbed his brother's arm and marched him over to lane four. "We'll try again somewhere else." The boys set their items on the belt and watched as the pile moved toward the cheerful woman.

"How are you two doing today?" she asked as she punched numbers into the register.

"Not too bad so far," Cody replied.

"Well that's a northeast accent if I've ever heard one," Marla, as the woman's name tag read, said.

"Um, yeah. We just moved here from Boston but most of our stuff hasn't arrived yet," Cody told her. "So our mom sent us up here to get some cooler clothes and a few other things until everything else shows up."

"Those underwear are his," Zack added and Marla grinned.

"Of course they are, dear." She dropped them in the bag and winked at Zack.

Zack went quiet as Cody and Marla exchanged small talk, Cody being as vague as possible with his answers to her many questions. His eyes roamed the front of the store nervously as Cody pulled out their stash of usable bills to pay and he smiled shyly as the woman told them goodbye.

"You talk too much," he said once they were outside.

"I couldn't be rude. Marla was too nice." Zack swallowed a comment about Cody's earlier idea.

"If she was so nice she should have given us a discount."

"I doubt there's a _nice boys from Boston _button on her register, Zack. Besides, we've still got almost a hundred dollars left in ones and a few old fives. We'll figure something out before we get too low."

"She probably thought our mom was a stripper with all those singles you paid with."

"There's an idea for when we're low on money." He struggled to keep a straight face.

"Really?" the sarcasm and disbelief rolled off Zack's tongue and puddled on the ground.

"No, probably not," Cody said after leaving Zack hanging for a few seconds.

"As much as I hate to say it, it _is_ an idea to keep in our back pocket if we get desperate."

"Who'd want to...oh, yeah," Cody mumbled as Zack's meaning dawned on him.

"Exactly."

"Deep, deep in our back pocket."

Five minutes later found them in the bathroom of the gas station changing into their new clothes. Zack locked himself in the stall after rummaging through their bag to find the best of the worst while Cody stripped near the sink. He yanked a tag off and pulled the neon shirt over his head.

"What should we do with our old clothes?" Zack asked as he peaked over the wall and tossed his balled up boxers in the direction of the sink.

"Gross," Cody said as he knocked the sweaty fabric from the porcelain lip into the basin with his elbow. "I think we should keep them with us for now. We can bury them in the park or something if it comes down to it."

"It'll be like a time capsule. I can see it now; someone digs them up twenty something years from now and tries to figure out why they look exactly the same as what they have then." Zack unlocked the door and stepped out of the stall and Cody laughed.

"I thought you hated that mesh shirt," he said as Zack adjusted his shorts and tried to stretch his shirt as far south as it would go.

"It's hot as hell outside and I hate it far less than these stupid underwear and especially these shorts. We're going to have to cross our legs like girls when we sit since they don't cover _anything_." Zack lifted up the bottom hem of his shorts an inch and showed Cody the white of the brief underneath. "We might as well not even bother wearing them."

"Yeah, that would go over great. We're trying to stay inconspicuous and walk around in our underwear. Just pretend that we're like those old NBA guys you watch on Youtube."

Zack snickered. "That's perfect. Two five-foot-flat superstars. Little Larry Birds." Zack stood next to his brother and looked them both over in the glass. "I guess everyone else looks just as ridiculous as we do so it'll be okay. Nice sleeves, by the way."

"I thought I'd show off my pythons," Cody said as he flexed in the mirror.

"Did you just make a Hulk Hogan reference?" Zack laughed.

"I think so. He was really big in the eighties, wasn't he?"

"Huge, Cody. Absolutely huge. He was like your hero John Cena times ten."

"Wow."

"And by the way, you don't have pythons. You have corn snakes." He turned away from the mirror after seeing Cody's look of indignation change to acceptance and quickly dug through the K-mart bag until he found the deodorant. He tossed it underhanded to Cody and was in the process of repacking everything into the backpack when he saw his cellphone. He pulled it out and quickly worked the menus until he had the camera ready.

"Smile, Cody," he said as he rejoined his brother.

"What are you doing?"

"Taking the world's oldest selfie," he told him as he slung one arm over Cody's shoulders and took the picture with the other.

"If you post that anywhere when we get home, I want you to know that I will kill you in your sleep," Cody informed him.

"Yeah, like I'd do that before I edited me out of it? Please." Zack put the phone back in the pack and zipped everything up. "Seriously though, I'm going to take a few pictures of things so we have proof to show Mom when we get home because she absolutely won't believe we went back in time and ground us for running away or something."

"That's...actually a very good idea," Cody admitted. He was a little surprised he didn't come up with it first.

"I know. Do you have your charger in here somewhere?" he began rifling through the outer pockets.

"Yeah, it's in one of them."

"Good. We'll have plenty of proof."

"What's our next plan?" Cody asked as he washed the morning's sweat out of his face in the sink.

"For now we can head back the way we came and find a cool place in the park while we figure out our master plan for getting home." Zack stood back up and pulled the heavy pack over his shoulders. He popped the lock on the door and the twins walked out of the bathroom and left the store.

_I think this is now my favorite out of all the stories I've written. So much nostalgia. I'll write one thing and instantly memories of other, usually completely unrelated, things pop into my head. For the record, the clothes were that bad and that short and K-marts were (and probably still are if there are any left) that dirty. Anyway, thanks for reading and let me know what you think. Thanks!_


	4. Chapter 4

"We need to find somewhere to have lunch soon, Zack. I don't know about you but I'm starving."

"I'm getting there myself. We should have stopped at that little wanna-be restaurant they had at the front of the K-mart. Maybe the food wouldn't have been as dusty as everything else," Zack told him and was instantly not quite as hungry as he'd been before imagining dust-encrusted hotdogs.

They were strolling in the park again, having no better place to go, and were making their return to the bench they'd sat on earlier when Zack's attention was caught by the sight of two bigger kids backing down a smaller boy. They were herding him to a line of shrubs that edged the trees that circled the park.

"I'm pretty sure there was a Burger King near the gas – ouch!" Why'd you stop?" Cody asked as he ran into Zack's back. He looked up just in time to see a punch thrown.

"Did that boy just hit that little kid?"

"Yes he did," Zack told him as he slid the backpack from his shoulders and thrust it into Cody's arms. "Hold this." Zack started running at the small group.

"Are you sure we should get involved?"

"Yes!" Zack yelled over his shoulder. He hit top speed and spared one final look back and saw Cody awkwardly running under the weight of their clothes and the box.

As he got closer, Zack could see that the younger boy was wearing a baseball uniform and had a gusher of a nosebleed. The other two appeared to be about his and Cody's age and their demeanor just yelled out _bully_. "Whoa whoa whoa, what's going on here?" Zack asked as he skidded to a stop between the two and the boy.

"Don't worry about it and get out of here," the bigger of the two said. Buzzcut, black t-shirt, braces and jeans, Zack quickly noted.

"I can't do that," he said as he looked for Cody out of the corner of his eye and wished he'd hurry up.

"Then I guess you want what he's having, don't you?"

"Well, not really, no."

"Too bad," the kid said and Zack almost didn't see the punch coming. He threw his arm up to deflect it and instinctively gave the kid two quick punches to the stomach for his trouble. Zack heard and smelled the air explode out of the boy's lungs in a rushand watched him sink gracelessly to his knees with both hands across his belly. Zack almost followed up the punches with another but held it when he realized that the kid wasn't a threat. He shifted his attention to the other kid who promptly backed off.

_He's a follower, _Zack said to himself as he gave the quiet kid a withering stare. _Flock of Seagulls hair_ chased the previous thought through his mind as the kid tossed his head to the side and flipped his hair out of his eyes. Zack suppressed a grin.

"That was a cheap shot," Flock of Seagulls said, breaking his silence as he puffed out his thin chest. Cody picked that moment to finally arrive and put the odds on their side.

"No cheaper than your buddy here punching on this little guy." Zack flexed his fingers and hoped that the stinging feeling would go away quickly.

"C'mon, Aaron, let's get out of here," the smaller kid said as he helped his friend to his feet.

His bluster gone and his pride mortally wounded, all the bully could do was try to look menacing as they backed away. Zack waved.

"We'll see you later, Curtis. Your little boyfriends won't be around you all the time. And you, new kid, I'll get you, too."

"Whatever," Zack said and waved again. Once Aaron and his little toady were gone, the twins turned their attention to the boy sitting on the ground. "You okay, Curtis?" Zack put his hand out and helped the boy up.

"Yeah, I think so."

"I'm Zack and this is my brother Cody."

"I'd tell you my name is Curtis but you already know that so I'll say thanks instead," Curtis told them.

"Don't worry about it," Zack said. "Cody, get the shirt I was wearing earlier out of the pack so he can clean up."

"I don't want to get your shirt all bloody, Zack," the boy said as he pinched his nose and spat.

"It's cool. I won't be wearing it again." Cody handed it to Curtis and the boy wiped the runnels of blood from his face and neck with one hand.

"Thanks," he said as he folded it in half and put it over his nose and squeezed.

"No problem. So what was all that about?"

"I don't know. They always mess with me for some reason. The one you hit, Aaron, he's like the worst kid around here ever. Nobody likes him except that Toby boy. I've never seen him get hit before." Curtis sounded mildly happy.

"Feels like I broke my hand," Zack told him as he wiggled his fingers again. Cody looked over anxiously but Zack waved him off. "I'm good." Cody ignored him and took Zack's hand, squeezing and prodding.

"This is why can't get involved in things like this," Cody muttered in Zack's ear, "what if you did break it and had to get a cast?"

"I'm okay, Doctor Cody. I'll be more careful next time." Zack pulled his hand back and looked around. "Why don't we walk you home just in case those two aren't done for the day?"

"Nah, you guys don't have to do that."

"It's okay," Cody told him, "we really don't have much else to do."

"You sure?"

"Trust me, our schedule is completely clear for the day."

"Okay, thanks, guys. I don't live too far away."

Curtis led the way, chattering the whole time, and they hadn't gone a full block before Cody decided he liked the kid. He was earnest and boisterous and always seemed to be smiling during his running commentary. And, he noticed as he cast a furtive glance at the boy as they walked, if he was a couple of inches taller and if his hair a few shades lighter, they almost could pass as brothers. He looked between Zack and the boy and saw that many of their features were quite similar. He wondered if Zack noticed and made a mental note to ask him later.

"Mom, hey Mom, I'm home!" Curtis called out as he led them in the side door. "Careful, the screen likes to swing back hard and catch you in the butt." Cody held it open until they were all through before letting it swing back and crash against the frame.

"What are you doing back so early? I thought you had practice until one," came from another part of the house.

"Coach never showed up, Mom."

"Well that's not like him at all." Cody heard the sound of the lid of a washer closing with a soft thud, the twisting of a knob, and the rush of water filling the machine. He glanced to his right and saw a card with _happy 11__th__ birthday _stenciled on it stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet between pictures of Curtis in two different Little League uniforms.

"That's what we said, too. We waited around for a little while and then decided to split when it started getting too hot. Oh, and I brought two new friends home. I hope that's okay."

"Oh, that's fine, honey," the voice replied a split second before its owner stepped into the kitchen. "Curtis Michael Martin, what in the world happened to you?" she said as she dropped the towel she'd been carrying to the floor. Cody nearly fell to the floor alongside the towel once his mind finished doing its double-take. Standing four feet away from him was a much younger version of what could only be his paternal grandmother.

"_No way_," Cody's mind said and he was almost positive he could hear the echos of Zack's similar thoughts. Her voice was the same, her stance was the same, she smelled the same, the only thing different was a few less old-age pounds and no grey hair. He looked around the kitchen and noticed items he remembered from old pictures on the walls and counters. _It can't be._

"Aaron sucker punched me in the park," Curtis told his mother through a pinched nose. "Then Zack and Cody here showed up and ran him and his little toady off."

"Come over here and let me see it," Curtis's mother told him and he obediently walked over and pulled the shirt away. "Is it broken?" she twisted the base of the cartilage slightly.

"Ouch! It probably is _now_," Curtis said indignantly as he pulled away and put the shirt back up to his nose.

"Take your uniform shirt off so I can soak the blood out of it." Curtis adeptly pulled the shirt off with one hand and she tossed it in the sink before turning on the faucet and adding a cap of dish soap.

"Boys, I'd like to thank you for stepping in like you did."

"It was nothing, Mrs. Martin," Zack replied earnestly while his mind reeled. There was so much to take in and he wanted to sit down until his brain unlocked.

"Maybe not, but I thank you just the same," she said as she bent down to pick up the towel. "Have you two eaten yet? I wasn't planning on making lunch yet but I can have a table loaded with sandwiches ready in five minutes." Cody's stomach rumbled at the mention of food.

"Sorry, no we haven't," he said sheepishly.

"Nothing to be sorry about. I can feed three growing boys just as easily as one. Curtis, why don't you show your friends where they can wash up?" She looked him over quickly before adding, "and change out of those pants while you're back there and bring them to me. You've got blood on the leg, too." The boys all looked in unison and saw that she was right.

"Sure, Mom. This way, guys." Curtis headed down the hall and the twins followed, stopping to point out the bathroom. "you can clean up in here. I'll be right back."

"This is our dad's house! Our grandmother is making us sandwiches decades before we're born! This is insane!" Zack whispered in his brother's ear as they washed their hands once they heard the sound of drawers opening in a back room.

"I know. Not another word about it until we're out of here, though. We've got to play it cool until then." Cody's mind was backflipping as he shook the water from his hands.

"Right. Fine," Zack agreed as he dried his hands on a familiar pink hand towel. "She's had these same towels for thirty years," he muttered as he handed it to Cody.

"Not now," Cody scolded softly just as Curtis returned in a pair of shorts almost as obnoxious as Cody's shirt.

"My nose stopped bleeding. Are you sure you don't want your shirt back, Zack? It looks expensive and I bet my mom can wash it."

"Nah, I'm sure. You can toss it." Curtis shrugged and dropped it in the wastebasket beside the sink.

Five minutes later the boys were all sitting down and digging into a hearty lunch of bologna sandwiches and cherry Kool-Aid. Zack absently ran a finger over a spot on the table's edge where in twenty-odd years he'd slip out of this exact chair as a toddler and give himself an incredible black eye and his mother another dozen grey hairs. Soon enough, they were all leaning against the backs of the chairs with full bellies and red upper lips. Cody wasn't sure how their father managed to eat anything because he talked almost the entire time but his plate was as clean as theirs.

"Hey Mom," Curtis said with a red Kool-Aid mustache, "Do you think they could sleep over tonight for my birthday? They just moved into the neighborhood and don't know anyone yet."

"I don't see why not," she replied after seeing the looks of surprise on the twins' faces. "You might want to ask them first though, Curtis."

"Do you guys want to? It'll be fun. You don't have to bring anything and we can play my new Nintendo all night."

"Not all night," his mother said as she was clearing the plates away.

"Okay, only until three," Curtis grinned and winked. His mother selectively ignored his comment.

"Um, we'll have to ask our parents first but probably so," Cody replied after giving Zack a questioning look and receiving a slight nod in return.

"The phone's right there, Cody." Curtis pointed to an avocado green rotary on the wall.

"Oh, we don't have the phone service set up yet. We'll have to walk back over," Cody told him, making it up as he went along. "I'm pretty sure they'll say yes, though."

"Curtis, why don't you give them our phone number?"

"Good idea, Mom," Curtis said as he got up and rummaged through a drawer for a scrap of paper and scribbled a number on it. "Here you go." He handed the paper to Zack and Zack's hand unconsciously moved to where his pocket would be on a _normal _pair of shorts but stopped as the fingers crossed his bare thigh and still hadn't touched any fabric.

"Thanks. We'll call you from a neighbor's house or something when we find out." Zack slipped the number into a back pocket.

"Thanks for lunch, Mrs. Martin," Cody said politely. "And it was nice to meet you, Curtis. We'll let you know as soon as we can."

A minute later they were out the door and headed to the sidewalk. Curtis waved from the porch and they waved back but neither spoke until they'd put the Martin household a block behind them. Cody shook his head repeatedly as he tried to make sense of their day.

"We just ate lunch with our dad and grandmother," Zack said quietly. "I'd like to remind you that we are currently older than our dad by nearly two and a half years. What do you think about this?"

"I don't even know where to start," Cody replied, kicking a small stone into the grass.

"Pick somewhere."

"Okay, how's this: why, of all the possible places and times in the history of the world that we could have ended up in, did we end up here? The odds are staggering."

"That's as good a place to start as any." Zack pondered before answering. "Maybe we influenced the box somehow."

"Before today I would have laughed at the idea of anything reading our thoughts but we were teleported twenty-six years into the past by a pumped-up Xbox so..." Zack could only shake his head. He was completely out of his league. "Next question," Cody went on, "Do we go back to Dad's house tonight? I say yes unless we want to spend another night sleeping in the park."

"I agree," Zack told him and that was settled.

"Question three," Cody said, clearly on a roll now that he'd organized his thoughts, "we've met Dad and his family-"

"We'll probably meet Grandpa Tom tonight."

"Sure, whatever, but when did Mom move here?"

It was Zack's turn to shake his head. "I don't even want to think about that. It's already bad enough without her maybe showing up and turning our new lives into some Disney version of _Back to the Future_."

"We need to. They might already know each other."  
"If Mom shows up at the sleepover tonight I'm out of there," Zack told him.

"I doubt that'll happen. I remember Mom saying something about Grandma Martin not letting them be in the same room with a door closed until they were married. I don't think she'd let a girl spend the night with three boys at all. Hey, what's wrong?" Cody asked as he looked over and saw that Zack had stopped dead in his tracks.

"I just had a very important thought pop into my head."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. Do you _ever _remember Dad talking about playing baseball as a boy?"

"No," Cody said after thinking about it. "I remember hearing all about his little garage bands from back in the day but not a single thing about baseball. Or any sport for that matter," he added after further thought.

"Doesn't that seem a little weird?"

"Yes it does but there could be two possible explanations. One, in this _now_, Dad never becomes a musician. He was never meant to be. He might be playing for a major league team in twenty years."

"What about us though? Would that rule us out of even existing here?"

"I don't know, Zack. Maybe. Or maybe Mom and Dad still end up together and we're the sons of a famous pitcher."

"What's the other reason?"

"Our coming here has changed the past, or future, I guess. You know what I mean."

"That doesn't make sense. You saw the pictures on the 'fridge, Dad's been playing baseball for a few years. How can we have affected that?"

"We...couldn't. I can't see how that would be possible." Cody looked incredibly stumped.

"What if we aren't the first people to come back in time? To this time?"

"You mean Arwin?"

"Who else?" Zack said. "He built the stupid thing."

"But why?"

"Think about it. He somehow changes Dad's future and him and Mom never get together."

"Which, I guess, gives Arwin a clear shot at her?" Cody didn't exactly follow the logic but shrugged it off for now as Arwin wasn't known for linear thinking.

"Exactly."

"And completely erases us from the equation in the process," Cody finished the thought.

"So we're never born?" Zack asked, his eyes as wide as possible.

"Well, if this is our past, possibly. If it's not, I'm not sure."

"You're not sure? This is pretty important, Cody."

"They don't exactly offer courses on things like multiverse theory in middle school, Zack. I just don't know."

"That would be much more useful than algebra right about now," Zack muttered as he shook his head slowly. "I guess we need to waste a little time and then find a pay phone, huh?"

"Pretty much," Cody agreed as they wandered back down the path to the park. It was just as full of people as it was earlier and they wove their way through the crowds. The twins made a large loop around the baseball diamonds and playground equipment. Cody was about to suggest they head back to the gas station when Zack pointed to the building that housed the restrooms.

"There's our pay phone," he said as he started walking toward it.

"I didn't even notice that earlier." Cody tried to remember if he'd ever actually _seen _a pay phone up close before. Maybe. He'd certainly never used one.

"Well, I'll forgive you because we kind of had other things on our minds when we were here. You know, like being thrown back into the distant past the first time and then seeing our little dad getting beat up by a bully a bit later. Usual stuff." Cody laughed in spite of himself.

Cody picked up the receiver when they got to the phone and instantly dropped and made a terrible face. "It's sticky." He wiped his hand viciously on his shirt.

"We're in a baseball park with a bunch of booger-eater baseball players. What did you expect?" Zack smirked. "I'll do it. Give me a dime." Zack grabbed the phone and pushed the coin through the slot before dialing the number. "We are doing this still, right?" Zack asked while the phone made the connection.

"Unless you don't want to all of a sudden."

"Nah, I want to. I was just – hello, Mrs. Martin. It's Zack. Is..." Zack pulled the phone away from his ear and they both heard their father's voice in the background repeatedly asking if the call was for him. A wide grin split Zack's face.

An enthusiastic _hey dude! _came through the earpiece and Cody laughed. "Hey yourself," Zack replied. "We can come over tonight if you still want us to." Cody wandered slightly away while his brother talked and looked over at the people sitting in the bleachers. The idea that he was on the sound stage of a movie set in the 80s washed over him yet again. He couldn't think about it for too long or it would drown him. Cody gazed back over at Zack and saw that he'd just hung the phone up and was rubbing his ear.

"That boy can talk," Zack said as Cody rejoined him.

"Now you know how the rest of the world feels when they talk to you."

"Anyway," Zack sidestepped Cody's slight dig, "I told da-Curtis that we'd come over at about six or so." He stealthily pulled his phone from the bag and checked the time. "It's two thirty now so that gives us around three hours to kill before we start walking back over there."

"We've got baseball right over there and it's free to watch," Cody said as he gestured to the nearest field. "Looks like the boys out there are around eight or so."

"Well, I guess that's better than tee-ball. Let's get a snow cone and see how many of them can hit the ball out of the infield."

_It's funny to me to find out that K-mart is still alive and (sort of) well after all these years. I've done my fair share of traveling and haven't seen one anywhere in about fifteen years. Thanks for the info, guys. It's both funny and sad to find out that they're still just as dirty as they were back in the 80s._

_Since I've been on a writing roll recently I was planning on having this done earlier in the week but Louisville winning the NCAA title and the partying afterward derailed those plans completely. Go Cards! and I'd like to give credit to a very game Michigan squad that gave us all we wanted and then some._

_I guess that's it for now. Let me know what you think in a review. It's always nice to hear what people think about the story._

_SI_


	5. Chapter 5

"Any idea of when Dad stopped going by Curtis and switched to Kurt?" Zack asked on their walk back to the Martin household. "I know it's not important in the big picture but it makes it even weirder to me than it already is." Zack waved absently to a little redheaded girl who had grinned and waved shyly at him.

"I actually have an answer to that," Cody told him. "I saw a court paper with his full name on it and asked Mom almost the same question about a year ago. She said that once he hit middle school he dropped the -_is _and changed the _c _to a _k _because he thought it sounded cooler. Or tougher. One or the other." The pair crossed the street so as to not intrude upon the 'outfield' of a kickball game taking place in an empty lot. They watched as a foul kick arced off over a neighboring house's back yard fence and as the gaggle of boys debated who was going to ring the doorbell and ask for their ball back.

"It's a shame that's the only thing we have a definite answer to," Zack said as they returned to their sidewalk once they had passed the game by.

"Tell me about it."

Another minute found them walking up the street to the Martin's house. They crested a small rise and saw their dad waiting for them on his front steps. "Eager little guy, isn't he?" Zack smirked as they walked up to the house and Cody nodded that he was.

"Hey dudes! Glad you could make it," he said as he high-fived the brothers. "Oh man! We're going to have so much fun tonight. Have you guys played Super Mario Brothers yet? I played it for a while this morning and it's so totally awesome."

"No, not yet," Zack told him. "We tried to get a Nintendo from, um, K-mart before we started packing everything up and they were always out of them or something. It looks cool, though."

"It's more than cool, Zack. Trust me. You've never seen anything like it!"

"I'll take your word for it, buddy," Zack told him with a friendly smile. "We aren't the first ones here, are we?"

"What do you mean?"

"It's your birthday so I figured there'd already be a bunch of people over here since we're kinda late."

"Well, um, this neighborhood isn't really full of that many kids," their father explained with a tinge of sadness skillfully buried deep in his voice. "My best friend had to go on vacation with his parents and won't be home until next week so it's going to be just the three of us, I guess. If that's cool with the two of you."

"It's perfectly cool with us but all I can think is that it's gonna suck to be him when he gets home, Curtis," Zack told him instantly, "because he's going to miss one hell of a party." He rapped his young father on the arm warmly and let him lead the way inside while Cody marveled yet again at how much more intelligent and perceptive his brother was than he ever got credit for.

"Curtis, honey," his mother called from the kitchen, "why don't you calm down just a bit? I heard you all the way outside. Your friends just got here and you're already talking their ears off." She stepped into the living room and greeted the twins. "Hello, boys. Nice to see that my son hasn't scared you away."

"It takes a little more than that, Mrs. Martin," Zack told her as he put a friendly arm around her son's shoulder.

"That's good to hear. Thank you, boys." She turned to her son. "Curtis, isn't there something you wanted to ask your friends?"

"Um, maybe?" The eyes of all three boys followed her gaze to the folded newspaper on the couch. "Oh yeah!" Cody caught his grandmother shaking a grin from her face. "Have you guys seen the new _Transformers_ movie yet? It came out like a few days ago."

"No, we haven't," Cody replied. "We've been, uh, busy packing and moving and haven't had a chance."

"Where'd you boys move from?" she asked. "Your accent sounds familiar but I can't place it. I'd say up north if I had to guess."

"Boston, ma'am," Cody said after hesitating for a split second.

"That's it. I knew I'd heard it before." Cody looked curiously at her for a moment and was trying to formulate a small lie if needed when Curtis saved him. The boy hadn't spoken in almost three seconds and he had a dire need to fix that.

"Mom was going to take me tomorrow or Saturday but I talked her into going tonight if you two hadn't seen it. So do you want to? My aunt works at the theater and she got me a ton of passes so we'll all get in free."

Their father's infectious enthusiasm was catching. "Well sure, if you want to. It's your birthday," Cody told him after a quick look at Zack's face told him his brother was in.

"This is going to be so cool. C'mon, let me show you my room. You can put your backpack in there, too, if you want." He started down the hall and the twins followed him.

"Don't you boys start a turtle stomping marathon yet. Traffic will be bad so we're going to have to leave in a few minutes if you want to make the show."

"Okay, Mom," Curtis replied with an over the shoulder wave. They walked down the short hallway and entered their father's room. The bed appeared to have been hastily made and a drawer stood partially open in the dresser but Zack's eyes caught something else almost immediately.

"Wow," Zack said after he took the room in. "Are there any Transformers that you don't have in here?"

"I have most of them but Chris has the few that I don't." He watched proudly as Zack went from shelf to desk to dresser, any flat surface, really, and looked at the dozens of plastic robots.

"So you're a big fan, huh?"

"I even have the underwear," Curtis answered and pointed to the dresser. "I don't wear them anymore though," he quickly added to sound cooler to his new friends. "C'mere and I'll show you the Autobots." Zack willingly joined Curtis and picked up a big plastic truck.

Cody stood back as Zack palled around with their father and felt a fleeting sadness. Zack had never found that one friend in their own time that he could connect with and here they were, back in time and in their own dad's childhood bedroom, and it looked like he'd found that friend. He wondered if Zack even remembered that Curtis was their dad right now. His little reverie was disturbed by a call from the living room. "Let's go, boys. We need to leave." Zack put down a half-transformed Optimus Prime and they headed out and loaded themselves into the car.

The three boys were dropped off in front of the theater with an order to be waiting outside at eight or they'd be walking home. After readily agreeing, they blew through the ticket counter and were inside the theater sitting three abreast about midway between the screen and the back wall. The opening credits rolled and Cody, sitting on his father's left, noticed that Curtis had sat up bone straight and had wide eyes. He looked past Curtis and saw that Zack had assumed almost the exact same position. He sat back with a grin on his face and tried to enjoy the movie despite the glam rock theme song.

The Decepticons were busy kicking in the Autobots' metal teeth in until the cavalry arrived and Curtis squealed and pumped a fist. "Grimlock is my favorite," he whispered to Cody when he looked over. Curtis quickly returned his eyes to the screen just in time to see a colossal metal Tyrannosaurus flying through the air before Optimus appeared a minute later and began to turn the tide of the battle. Cody spared a look past his father to see Zack just as engrossed in the film. The fighting ended and a mournful squeak came from the middle of the boys.

"Prime can't die," Curtis said quietly. Cody almost put an arm around his shoulder since his grief seemed genuine but the action quickly picked up again and his father's sorrow was drowned out by more explosions and laser blasts and was forgotten, at least temporarily.

An hour later they were walking outside and Curtis and Zack were busy reenacting the scenes while Cody hung a few steps back. They jumped and shot pretend laser beams as Cody watched a tiny white hatchback drive by with the windows down. "You've been calling all day for it so get ready. Here's Madonna's new song, 'Poppa Don't Preach'," a dj's voice said and Cody caught the first few notes of the song before the car turned and disappeared out of view. He blew out a deep breath and shook his head and tried to not think about his mother singing that song under her breath while cleaning when they were little.

"Hey, Cody, what was your favorite part?" Curtis asked, bringing him out of his thoughts.

"Oh, um...I guess when...I don't know. There's too many to pick from," he answered. His mind was still reeling from the culture shock.

"Same here. I liked the whole movie. I'd watch it again right now if I could," Curtis echoed. "You know what would be really cool though? If we have those hoverboards in 2005. That would be totally rad. I don't even care that I'll be all old like my dad by then. I'll still ride it everywhere." He leaned side to side with his arms out on his imaginary board and Cody didn't have the heart to tell him that they were still waiting for hoverboards in their _when_.

"It would be the most awesome thing ever," Zack quickly agreed. "No, second most. The most would be you, Cody, wearing that little white jumpsuit the boy was wearing." Cody shot him a look just as Curtis' mother pulled up to the curb. She waved them over and Curtis' nose lead the way.

"Is that pizza? Cool, guys, Mom got pizza!" the boy exclaimed as he threw himself into the car. "It smells like pepperoni. C'mon, let's go!"

"We need to talk later," he whispered in Zack's ear as they climbed in the back seat after their father. "Seriously."

A twenty minute car ride found them back at the Martin house and Zack and Curtis dashed into the house, each with a pizza box in their hands while Cody moved at a more respectable pace. He made it in the door just in time to see Zack shaking hands with their grandfather. Like their grandmother, he looked similar to the man they remembered. No grey had snaked its way through his short, dark hair yet and what he playfully called _experience fat _in their timewas still hard muscle here. The mustache though, Cody inwardly snickered, was a distinctly Eighties touch.

"And here's Cody, Dad."

The man reached his hand out and engulfed Cody's. "Nice to meet you, Cody."

"You too, sir," Cody replied.

"I'd thank you two for stepping in today but it seems that my son over there either has to use the bathroom badly or is anxious for you boys to go back there and play that game with him," he said and the twins looked over to see their father bouncing from foot to foot in the hallway.

"We want to go play Mario, Dad," Curtis announced as he stopped vibrating. "I've been waiting all day."

"Go on then," he said, waving his hands at them. "Just give me a piece of that pizza before you go. And don't tell your mother or she'll go make me work it off in the yard," he added conspiratorially. Curtis begrudgingly gave him a slice and they were off.

It was nearly three hours before the group took a break from stomping on mushrooms and kicking turtles. The pizza boxes were each half bare and one empty soda bottle lay on its side while a second was less than a quarter full. Cody, having given up some of his turns to his brother since Zack was more into the game than he was, nibbled on a crust as he watched the other two massage their hands.

"I think if I played one more minute my thumbs would fall off," Curtis said as he shook blood back into his fingertips. Zack looked down at his hands and could see dark red impressions where the buttons had been pressed into his skin repeatedly.

"No joke," Zack agreed. He slid the controller away from himself. His hands hurt but the temptation to play more was intense.

A knock on the door frame stole their attention away from the screen. "Boys, we're heading to bed now. Don't make too much noise and try not to stay up too late, okay?" Three heads nodded affirmatively. "Oh, and Curtis, don't forget you still need to take a shower," their grandmother said. "You're at that age now where you're starting to stink."

"I _know_, Mom. You tell me every night," he said with exasperation.

"I keep telling you because I hope you'll eventually listen." Cody saw his grandmother's lip turn up into a hint of a smile.

"_Mom..._"

"Right, right. Just take one and use soap. You and Cody can take one too if you want, Zack. I know it was hot today."

"We got it, Mom. We all stink. We'll take care of it."

"Good night, boys," she laughed and headed back down the hallway.

Curtis rolled his eyes once she was gone. "Don't worry, buddy," Zack told him, "our Mom does the exact same thing." _And _your _mom has told us to hit the showers a time or two herself, _he added silently.

"At least I'm not alone. I'll go hop in the shower real fast and then you guys can. Be right back." He grabbed a change of clothes and disappeared. The water came on in the bathroom and Zack opened his mouth to speak but Cody shook his head.

"Not yet. We'll wait until we know everyone's asleep."

"You aren't going to crash out early, are you Cody?" Zack asked.

"I couldn't sleep if I wanted to. My brain is so scrambled right now."

"I couldn't either. Not a chance. I want to ask Dad some questions before he goes to bed, though. Are you cool with that?"

"As long as you keep them general. We don't want to make anything too obvious."

"I can do that," Zack told him.

Another minute passed and the water shut off. Curtis came springing back into the room. "Your turn if you want," he said as he dried his hair with a towel. Zack hopped up and snagged some new clothes from the backpack and took his turn. Cody exchanged small talk with his father until Zack came back in a few minutes later.

"Okay, Cody, it's all yours." He gave his hair one last rub and tossed the towel to his brother. Cody grabbed some clothes of his own and put Zack's dirty clothes in a separate pocket in the backpack.

"Be right back." Cody locked himself in the bathroom and turned the shower on. He stripped and stood under the water and felt his mind slow down for the first time since he'd awoken so many hours and years ago. Fragments of thoughts coalesced into ideas. He ran his hands back through his hair and let the shampoo rinse out. He sighed and quickly washed the rest of his body.

Once he was dried off, Cody put on a fresh white t-shirt and underwear before pulling his shorts back on. He hung the towel on the rack and walked back toward the bedroom. Once inside, Zack took it as his cue to start his questioning.

"So how long have you been playing baseball, Curtis?" he asked as Cody sat down.

"This is my second season."

"You ever play the guitar? I'm not sure why but you look like you would." Cody's eyes blasted wide open and he had to keep his jaw from slamming to the carpet from his brother's stunning lack of subtlety.

"I used to," Curtis admitted. "I have this really awesome electric in the closet. Check it out," he said as he got up and retrieved it. "I used to play all the time but Coach keeps us busy practicing." He pulled a pick from between the strings and played a few chords. He frowned when it didn't sound right.

"Here, let me see it. It's out of tune." Zack took the guitar and tuned it by ear.

"Wow, I have to use one of those little tuner things to do that. How'd you learn?"

Zack nearly answered _you taught me about six years ago _but caught himself. "My dad. He's really good." Cody shot his brother a warning look but Zack waved it off. He strummed out a song that Curtis might write in another fifteen years and Cody's warning look turned to a glare.

"You play really good," Curtis told him as he listened. "I might have to start playing again when the season's over."

"Why not now? I could teach you," Zack said and Cody's mind spun with the braincramping idea of a son teaching his father what the father would teach him in the future. He took a long drink from his glass and tried not to think about it.

"Coach says that it'll give me calluses and then I won't be able to pitch as well."

Zack scrunched up his nose. "I've never heard that before."

"That's what he said," Curtis shrugged. "And now that I think about it, you kind of sound like him."

"Oh yeah?"

"You're from Boston, right?" Zack nodded. "I'm pretty sure that's where he said he's from. Maybe you know him."

"Boston's a big city, Curtis. It's possible though. What's his name?" Zack asked as he seamlessly transitioned from his father's song to a Nirvana riff.

"Arwin Hochauser." Zack's fingers slid down the strings with a screech and Cody could have been knocked over with a feather. "You know him, don't you?"

"Heck yes we do. He's the reason-" Cody reached over and pinched the back of Zack's arm. "Ouch!" he laid the guitar across his lap and rubbed the skin just above his elbow gingerly.

"Sorry, I slipped. Arwin used to work with our mom," Cody told him.

"That is so far out. I can't believe you two know him. It's crazy."

"Yeah, it's crazy, isn't it, Zack?" he looked at his brother with knitted eyebrows as his mind kicked back into high gear.

"Totally crazy," Zack said and nearly cracked the pick in two. "Has he been your coach both years?" Curtis nodded that he had.

"I didn't know Arwin had been gone that long, did you Zack?" Cody asked.

"It seemed like just yesterday when we saw him last."

"Just so we know we're talking about the same guy, he's tall, skinny, kinda bald, a little on the weird side, maybe?" Cody asked, already knowing the answer but having to make certain.

"Yep! That's him."

"Do you think he has a house around here?"

"Probably, Zack. I don't see why he wouldn't. Let me go get the phone book and we'll see." Curtis got up and scampered off to the kitchen and returned with the heavy yellow brick. He plopped it down and began rifling through the pages, a finger running down the list of names. "Here we go. Hey, I know where that street is." He turned the phone book around and showed the twins.

"Is it far from here?"

"Nah, it's not even five blocks away."

"That's convenient," Cody said as he gave Zack another conspiratorial look.

"It is," Curtis agreed but for different reasons. "He can be at the ball park in like three minutes." _And it just happens to be close enough to keep an eye on you if he wanted to, _Cody added to himself.

"We should go by and see our friend, don't you think, Cody?" Zack asked pointedly.

"Yeah, that would be cool. I bet he would be real surprised to see you guys," Curtis interrupted.

"Oh I guarantee he would," Cody agreed.

"I'll go with you. I want to make sure he's okay after he missed practice yesterday."

"Sounds like a plan to me," Zack told him and it was settled.

_And there is chapter five. I should have had it up sooner but a combination of the BO2:Uprising expansion and some awesome 80s retrospective shows on NatGeo and some other channel took up almost all of my free time last week. The Black Ops thing was just mindless fun (nothing better than shooting mouthy little brats and hearing them rage on XBL) but the 80s shows were _research _since they reminded me of so many things I'd forgotten about and gave me all kinds of new ideas to put in the story._

_Anyway, let me know what you think of the story. I appreciate it._

_SI_


	6. Chapter 6

Cody pulled a blanket over his father when the boy finally fell asleep. They'd seen the signs start almost an hour ago but Curtis had fought off his tiredness as long as he could and it was nearly two in the morning when he finally yawned his last yawn and dozed off.

"He sleeps just like you do," Zack said softly and gestured at Curtis' prone form.

"Huh?"

"He's curled himself up into a little ball just like you do." Zack got up and walked to the door and closed it fully. "Okay, are we ready?"

"I think so. Dad's out like a light."

"Good. You start because you have your _I've been thinking _face going on right now." Zack sat back down and got comfortable with his back against the bed frame and his knees drawn up to his chest.

Cody took a breath and tried to figure out how to say what he felt badly needed saying. "First things first. I think you're getting a little too friendly with Dad." The words tasted bad in his mouth.

"I'm what?" Zack looked at him with an eyebrow raised.

"You're becoming too friendly with him and I don't think it's a good idea."

"And why not?" Zack almost looked hurt.

"Because the more I've thought about it, the more I'm sure that for every moment we're around him, or maybe just here in his time in the first place, the more likely we are to change our own future. Just like Arwin seems to be doing but without the intent."

Zack considered Cody's point before responding. "I think you're incredibly wrong, but think about it like this," he said. "If we can't go back home we're going to need somewhere to stay. Why not make a friend or two along the way just in case we are stuck here? You know Grandma Martin would take us in in a heartbeat if it came down to it and it turns out that Dad was a pretty cool kid. Being stuck here wouldn't be that bad."

"You're not getting it, Zack. This isn't our time."

"No, I don't think you're getting it. Until we get home, this is our time. And if we can't get home, this will _be_ our time."

"We're from the land of cable internet, hi-def televisions, two-ounce cell phones, and the Miami Heat. This is the time of 8-bit video games, rat tails, valley girls, and Miami Vice. It sucks."

"Take off your rose-colored glasses for a sec, Cody. Our future isn't all good stuff. Wars, global warming, and all that other stuff you talk about but I ignore. Our time isn't perfect."

"Yeah, it's not, but it's our time. It's where we were born. Where our mom and dad are." Zack glanced over to the sleeping form of Curtis but Cody cut him off before he could say a single word. "No, he's not our dad. Technically, yes, but he's not. He's going into the fifth grade this fall, Zack. Fifth grade! He probably doesn't even like girls yet. He probably hasn't even hit puberty yet."

"Hush, Cody, you're getting loud," Zack warned.

"Sorry." Cody was still very upset.

"It's cool, just stay calm. Now look, I'm not saying it's better here but it's not as bad as you think."

"You might be right but I'm not going to admit it."

"I know I'm right. It's not going to matter, though, because we _are _going home."

Cody looked down at his hands. "I don't know if I can fix the box, Zack." Admitting that again made him feel better and worse at the same time.

"You'll do the best you can but I know you can do it."

"Thanks."

"No problem. Now what else is on your mind? You look like you've got more stuff backed up in your brain."

"I do. While you two were playing Mario-"

"I'd just like to say that the games on my phone look a ton better than his Nintendo," Zack interrupted.

"That's because the computer chip in your phone is almost thirty years more advanced and probably tens of thousands of times more powerful than the chip in his Nintendo."

"Can you imagine Dad playing Black Ops right now? It would absolutely blow his mind."

"Anyway, like I was saying," Cody continued, trying to force down the smile that came with the thought of Curtis rage quitting in Zack's game. Like father, like son. "I was thinking about how Arwin has suddenly started to look very old. He's what? Two or three years older than Mom?"

"That sounds about right," Zack said after thinking about it for a few seconds.

"That should make him just shy of forty but tell me he's not looking over fifty these days."

Zack thought about it and couldn't deny that his brother had a point. The hairline that had been receding when they first moved into the hotel had now all but completely disappeared and the sides had changed from brown with a stray grey hair occasionally mixed in to almost all salt with a dash of pepper. Deep crows' feet had taken root around Arwin's eyes and Zack was almost certain that his glasses had gotten thicker. He nodded his agreement. "So he's aged at least ten years in the last three years or so?" Zack asked.

"It looks like it. A little of it might be natural but not much. Not that fast. The only way it can be possible is that he's been living in both times. He'll come here and then come back to our time the minute he left."

"How does he..." Zack trailed off, the scale of the question he was trying to ask was too big for him to put into words.

"I don't know. I can't really even figure out _why._" Cody shrugged and put his hands back in his lap. "It's like he's here keeping an eye on Dad."

"Maybe he has to," Zack said, his eyes glimmering with sudden inspiration.

"Huh?" Cody cocked his head.

"Ten years, right? Give or take a little?" he asked and Cody nodded. "So let's say that means around three years here and three years in our time. We'll call that six. Let's add in a year or two of naturally getting old. That still leaves two or three years. What if this isn't the first time he's gone back into the past? Or maybe this isn't even the first _when _he's gone back to. Maybe he found out that if he leaves Dad alone for too long, things start to go back the way they should be."

"It's elastic," Cody muttered.

"What?"

"Time. Maybe elastic isn't the right word but it fits." Zack awaited an explanation and Cody obliged him. "Arwin is trying to change the past but the past keeps trying to right itself. That would explain why he's spent the last few years here instead of just getting Dad to play baseball and then leaving."

"He's going to be like seventy by the time Dad graduates if he keeps this up. He'll have even less of a chance with Mom then than he does now. It doesn't make sense." Zack rubbed his temples and exhaled slowly.

"Arwin isn't known for making sense," Cody told his brother and shook his head. "He probably hasn't even thought of that."

"This is all making my head hurt."

"You're not the only one. I think I've thought just about enough for one day. Nothing makes any sense and I'm tired," Cody said as he looked over at their sleeping father and yawned.

"I hear that. Let's call it a night and we'll see what happens tomorrow." The twins pulled the covers over themselves and settled down for the night. Cody heard Zack's breathing deepen almost immediately and hoped it wouldn't be too long before he joined him.

After a filling late breakfast of pancakes and bacon, the trio was out the door with a promise from Curtis to his mother to come back soon. Curtis was anxious to check on his coach while the twins were eager for a completely different reason. They walked down to the end of the Martin's street and turned onto a larger road.

"How far is his house again?" Zack asked as they walked. He pulled the collar of his shirt out and let a gust of wind blow against his skin. It was early but it was already hot.

"Just a few streets over. We'll be there in ten minutes. If you guys had bikes we'd be there in like two."

"We do. They just haven't got here yet," Zack said and Cody could have punched him.

"What he means is that all of our stuff hasn't been delivered yet. We're still waiting on a bunch of stuff to show up. I guess the moving company sent most of our things to Australia or somewhere."

"They'll get here eventually and when they do, I'll have to take you on a tour of the city. Or at least the parts that we don't need the highway to get to. Where'd you guys move into, anyway?"

"Oh. We're over on...What was the street called, Zack?" Cody asked as he drew a blank. He never was much of a liar.

"Um...I'm not sure."

"Magnolia. It's Magnolia. I couldn't think of the name of it for a second," Cody said as he pulled the first street name he could remember seeing from his head.

"No kidding? Your parents must have bought that house in the court, right?"

"Yeah, I guess that's the one," Cody said as a sinking feeling took root in his stomach.

"I ride my bike over that way all the time. That's so rad. You guys live like five minutes from my house."

"That is pretty rad," Cody said, the decade's slang feeling weird on his tongue.

"I'll have to come over and check the place out."

"Definitely. Give us about a week or so to get settled in, though, okay? My mom and dad said no one can come over until we get everything unpacked," Zack told him, speaking up for the first time in the unexpected conversation. "They're kind of freaks like that. I'm kind of surprised they even let us stay the night at your place. I guess we were getting on their last nerve or something."

"Oh for sure. When you guys get it all ready just let me know."

Soon enough they came to the street they were looking for and turned, counting off house numbers as they went. Ranch home after ranch home passed by as they walked until they rounded a slight curve and saw the road dead-ended against a stand of trees.

"That has to be it," Cody announced as they approached the last house.

"7344. That's it," Curtis nodded as he read the numbers over the porch. Cody had been anticipating an explosion of garden gnomes in the bushes or a riot of flamingos covering the lawn but the house was unremarkable. They passed the mailbox and there it was. _A. Hochauser _written in cheap black adhesive letters. He looked up at the house and almost expected Arwin to be standing at the window.

Curtis led the way up the drive and to the porch, pushing the doorbell as the twins stood a step behind. They knew he wouldn't be home but kept it to themselves as they waited. Curtis pushed the buzzer again. He turned around, disappointed, a few seconds later.

"He must not be home," he said as he looked over to the closed garage door. "I hope he's okay."

"I'm sure he is," Zack told him. "He might have had to go out of town or something."

"He's not home, boys," a voice called to them from across the street. Startled, they turned around and an elderly woman was standing at her mailbox.

"You don't know where he went, do you? He's my baseball coach and he didn't show up to practice yesterday," Curtis called back.

"Can't say that I do, young man. I heard him leave the day before yesterday but never heard him come home."

"Does he make that much noise?" Zack asked innocently.

"No, but his car does," she laughed and went through the mail in her hand.

"Well, thanks," Curtis told her and she waved as they started back down the street. He looked back over his shoulder at the house as they reached the corner and the frown on his face was evident when he turned forward again. "I hope nothing happened to him."

"I'm sure he's fine, Curtis," Zack told him. "You know how Arwin is by now, right? Something comes up and he gets caught up in it and forgets to call and tell anyone. He's probably back in Boston right now having a birthday dinner with his mom or whatever."

"Yeah, I can see that," the boy answered. "He is a little spacy sometimes." Cody's mind changed _sometimes _to _all the time _but he stayed silent.

"I guess we'd better get home now so we can help unpack everything. Thanks for having us over last night. We had fun."

"No problem, Cody. It was awesome to meet you guys. Call me or come on over if you get some free time. I'll probably be home since we don't do too much."

"Sounds like a plan." Zack told him before turning to his brother. "Hey, Cody, do you think Mom and Dad will let us sneak back over tomorrow?"

"They might. Maybe. We have a lot to do, though." He shifted his position slightly so Zack could easily see the pack with the broken time machine hanging from his shoulders.

"If they do, come on over. We'll find something to do. Maybe swim or something."

"You have a pool?" Zack asked as he tried to remember if he'd ever looked in Curtis' back yard.

"We don't but there's a community pool maybe five minutes from my house the other way." He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. "Just call me."

"Will do, buddy," Zack said as he awkwardly went from trying to bump knuckles to giving Curtis a high-five. Cody added his goodbyes and the small group split. Curtis set out for home while the twins waited for a rusty Ford to pass before crossing the street.

"Okay, now that we have nothing to do for the rest of the day, what are we doing?"

"Let's get something cold to drink and then I'll tell you what I'm thinking at the park," Zack replied.

"Sounds good to me."

Twenty minutes later they were relaxing under a tree in the park with the backpack between them and giant gas station fountain drinks sitting on their bellies. Cody took a long sip and pressed the cold cup against his forehead.

"So, before we melt and it becomes irrelevant, what is this master plan of yours?" he asked.

"We're going to break into Arwin's house," Zack told him matter-of-factly after checking that they were alone.

"We're going to do _what_?"

"I figured you'd say that but the way I see it, he owes us that much."

"That sounds like a monumentally bad idea, Zack."

"It does when you first think about it but let me tell you why it's a good idea."

"Oh please do."

"One, we won't be sleeping outside. This might be the eighties but it's still probably not all that good of an idea for two kids to sleep outside in random places."

"I'll give you that," Cody admitted.

"Good. Two, there will most likely be food there so that will make our money last a little longer." He looked over to see Cody reluctantly nodding. "And three, which will be the most important of the reasons, we'll have a clean, dry spot for you to take the box apart."

"After seeing his office, I'll just settle for dry."

"True." Zack settled in and waited while Cody debated the pros and cons of the plan. If they were back at home right now, Cody would be pacing back and forth across the living room with his hands knotted behind his back as he thought but he simply rocked the cup around on its base.

Cody was quiet for a few seconds as he weighed the pros and cons of Zack's idea. "We can _not_ get caught," he finally said.

"I have to admit that I was expecting more of an argument."

"Don't get me wrong, I think your idea is terrible and has the possibility of going wrong on so many levels that I can't even begin to count them and I don't like it at all. Having said that, the only other option I can think of would be to tell Curtis and his parents the truth and stay with them until we manage to get home and your idea is only slightly less awful than that."

"No, don't worry, there's no need to sugar-coat it, Cody. I'm a big boy," Zack said with a hint of a smirk on his lips. "We won't get caught. Once it's dark and we're sure that old woman is asleep, we'll sneak around through the woods at the back of his house and see about getting inside."

"How are we going to get in his house?"

"Well, I'm hoping that Arwin is just as scatterbrained here as he is at home and left his back door unlocked. If he isn't-"

"Which is a distinct possibility since his house might have a thing or two from our time in it and he'd want to keep those away from everyone," Cody interjected.

"Right, that too. If he's got it locked down, I bet I can still get us in somehow."

"Do I even want to ask how you might know how to do this?

"I watched a friend of mine sort of break into his own house with a library card after he locked himself out one day."

"You were hanging out with that juvenile delinquent friend of yours, weren't you?"

"Maybe. And his name is Paul."

"Mom would absolutely kill you if she knew. She told you not to hang around him after he got arrested."

"They couldn't ever prove it was him." Zack shrugged. "And besides, I think it will be worth it if my plan works."

"It probably wasn't even his house," Cody groused. He intensely disliked the boy and didn't want to let him off that easy.

"It was that time," Zack told him and Cody leaned his head back against the tree and rolled his eyes.

"We're so going to get caught."

"We won't. If I can't do it in two minutes we'll get out of there and think of something else."

Cody threw his hands up in defeat. "Fine. What are we going to do until it gets dark?"

"We'll figure something out. I'm pretty sure I saw a basketball court at the other end of the park. We can go get our Larry Bird on for a while and see what happens after that."

"We've got the shorts for it," Cody admitted as he looked down at his legs. "When did they start getting longer?"

"Not for a few years yet."

"Wonderful." Cody took a long drink and sighed.

_I don't think that there is anything as irritating to a writer as having a few paragraphs continually seem so wrong no matter how you try to change them around. The section where Zack and Cody were first talking simply refused to work for me for a full week before it finally settled out today. I hope it works for you all because it still bugs me a little for some reason. Anyway, I think that's all so let me know what you think._


	7. Chapter 7

"So what are we going to do once we get inside his house? Are we going to be stuck in there?" Cody asked quietly.

"Not if we don't want to be. I'm pretty sure we can get out through the glass door and make it to back to the woods without being seen. We'll just have to make sure that old lady isn't in her front yard when we go. She's the only house on the street that could see us and even if she did look out at just the right time, the angle from her house is terrible. Once we get inside I think we'll be okay to come and go as we please."

The twins had been sitting a dozen yards deep in the woods diagonally behind Arwin's house for over an hour as the sun slowly went down. Zack was squinting into the darkness trying to make out any movement on the street, especially the old woman's house, while Cody was busy smashing mosquitoes against his skin.

"If we stay out here much longer, we won't need to break in to his house and fix the box since we'll be dried out husks," he whispered as he smeared another one on his calf.

"We can't do anything until that old woman goes to bed," Zack reminded him as he absently swatted one himself. "Her front windows look right out on Arwin's side door."

"I know, but this is awful. It's still a million degrees and there's bugs everywhere and I need to pee."

"We're in the woods, Cody. Go find a tree. Nobody will see you." Zack absently gestured at the nearest maple tree.

"I'm not worried about being seen. I'm worried about stepping in a hole or stumbling through poison ivy."

"Then stand up and turn around. Just be sure to aim downhill so it doesn't run back on us."

"I'll take a few steps, thanks. There's enough moonlight for that." Zack heard his brother walk away and tried to ignore the thunderous sound splattering behind and focus on the woman's house. He readjusted his position as the noise petered out and Cody rejoined him.

"I don't know what she can possibly be doing in there," Zack grumbled. "Aren't old people supposed to be in bed by nine? I swear, if she stays up to watch the late news I'm-there we go!" Zack pumped a fist in the dark as the living room light in the woman's house finally went out. "We'll give her five minutes and then we'll get on it."

Zack's hands went to the myriad of small pockets on Cody's pack and dug for his phone. "It's going to be our make-shift flashlight," he told Cody when he saw his brother's questioning look. "I could probably do it in the moonlight but this won't hurt." He pressed the button and the screen glared to life. Zack checked the battery level before pressing it against his chest until it dimmed.

The minutes trickled by and Zack was ready with his phone and library card in one hand and the strap of the backpack in the other. He silently mouthed _let's go _and gave the pack to Cody. They crept through the woods and paused at the edge of the grass for a moment while they gave one last look and listen. Satisfied that the coast was as clear as it was going to get, they moved quickly through Arwin's back yard.

"What if he has a floodlight with one of those motion sensors?" Cody whispered as they neared the halfway point.

"What a _great_ time to have that idea!" Zack replied. "It's too late now, keep moving." They crossed the rest of the short grass and soon were standing on the concrete patio on the back of the house. Zack's first stop was the large glass sliding door and he gave the handle a light pull. He hadn't expected it to be unlocked and wasn't disappointed. He scampered around to the side door and leaned against the wall.

"What do you want me to do?" Cody asked as he stood by nervously.

"Be my lookout. Tell me if you see anyone coming down the sidewalk." Zack returned his attention to the door knob and powered on his phone again. The quiet sounds of lock picking seemed incredibly loud in the boys' ears as Zack worked.

"How's it going?"

"Not as well as I had hoped," Zack answered. "This door is a lot more flush against the frame than the one I saw Paul open and it's harder."

"Wonderful. If you can't get it, you can't get it. Let's just get out of here." Cody retreated from the front of the house and stood close by.

"Just give me another minute. I almost had it a second ago."

"It's a good thing there isn't a deadbolt."

"You know, you really aren't helping things here, brother," Zack hissed. He felt a split second of success before the library card slipped and all progress was lost. "Dammit. You're making me nervous, Cody. Go check the back of the house or something."

Cody walked back to the rear of the house and looked around. A cobblestone path led off from the patio and wound its way through a small garden. He walked partially along it and stopped suddenly. "What's this?" he mumbled as he stepped back and took another look down at his feet. One of the stones didn't reflect the moonlight quite the same as the others. Cody smiled to himself as he squatted down and picked the stone up, not surprised in the least at its light weight. He flipped it over and saw a small panel and immediately slid it open to discover a key. He quickly replaced the plastic stone and scurried back to his brother.

"Give me one more minute, Cody. If I don't get it by then we'll go."

"No, let me try," he said as an idea struck him. "I can't be any worse at it than you are. Maybe I'll get lucky." He palmed the key as Zack handed over the phone and card in a huff.

"Fine, have at it. It's harder than it looks, you know."

"I'll find out." Cody moved into position and pretended to fumble with the card and light for a few seconds before sliding the key into the lock. _This better be Arwin's key and not the old owners' or I'm going to look like a fool, _he thought as he moved his body to screen Zack a bit more before twisting the key. He heard the tumblers turning and gave the knob a turn and removed the key at the same time. "Presto!" he said as he pushed the door open to Zack's amazement.

They were both inside the house and had the door closed behind them in less than three seconds. "So how many houses have you broken into, Cody? Is there something you want to tell me?"

"It really wasn't that hard. I got the card against little slidey part and fiddled with it. When I figured that wasn't going to work, I used the key I found in his garden," Cody told him, flashing the key.

"He had a key in his garden?" Zack shook his head.

"Yep. In one of those fake rocks that's supposed to look real but doesn't. We'll have to tell Arwin to hide his key better when we get back to Boston. Our Boston."

"That's not going to be an issue, Cody. Arwin isn't coming back here again. I'll make sure of it personally," Zack spat and Cody couldn't disagree. "Let's check this place out. Keep quiet and don't turn on any lights. Get your phone out if you want."

Cody did just that, leaving the backpack on the kitchen counter for the time being. They walked with their screens pointed at the floor and took in the layout of the house. The dining room was right beside the kitchen and the living room was a few feet away behind a half wall with a hallway leading into the darkness.

"Bedrooms and bathroom down that way, I bet," Cody said as they walked through the dining room, his eyes locked on the massive, thick dinosaur of a television sitting in the entertainment center. "And a split-level den," he added as they turned the corner to see three steps down to another room with an equally large television on the far wall.

"Yep, there's the glass door," Zack said as he stepped into the room and peeked behind the brown curtain and out into the darkened yard. He looked around, doing his best to avoid laying eyes on the two garish couches along the walls. "And another door to a basement." He opened the door and looked into the gloom.

"We'll check that later," Cody said and Zack closed the door. They quickly swept through the back of the house and found the bedrooms and bathroom before returning to the kitchen. Zack immediately went to the refrigerator.

"Wish me luck," he said as he pulled the door. Cody had wanted to search the house for usable materials but the second the light inside the 'fridge popped on, those ideas were banished. Lunch meat, milk, eggs, and an assortment of leftovers nearly filled the interior of the machine. He licked his lips unconsciously. "Jackpot," Zack said as he started pulling things out and setting them on the nearest counter.

"Looks like he has definitely been coming back here regularly," Cody noted, pointing to the expiration date on a package of salami. "Still almost two weeks away."

"I should be pissed off about that but I'm too hungry to care right now," Zack told him as he began assembling a triple-decker sandwich. Cody agreed as he fixed a smaller sandwich for himself.

A quick search through the cabinets and the pantry found loads of canned goods and eventually glasses. They chose the largest of the glassware and filled two of them with milk, leaving the plastic container on the counter for easy refills. Standing next to the counter with the refrigerator door still open to provide light, the boys devoured their late dinner in minutes. Zack belched.

"That saved us a lot of money," Cody said as he cleaned up the few remains of their feast. Zack wiped the back of his hand over his mouth and brushed the crumbs to the floor.

"No kidding. There's enough food here to last us at least a week. Heck, maybe even two. Plenty of time for you to figure out how to fix the box."

Cody inwardly groaned when Zack brought repairing the time machine up. Zack was ironclad in his belief that Cody could fix it but all Cody wanted to do was throw up his hands each time he thought about what might be hiding inside the plastic housing. What if there was some sort of futuristic alloy in there? How could he get more of that if it was needed? He shook his head and pushed the thoughts away.

"You okay, buddy?"

"Huh?" Cody returned to reality to see Zack waving a hand in front of his face.

"You kinda zoned out there for a while."

"I was thinking."

"Anything I should know about?"

"Not really. Just stuff. Should we take a closer look around the house now?"

"I think we should wait until the morning for that. We can use the sunlight coming through the drapes and blinds to see instead of having our phones out and possibly giving ourselves away if someone looked over here at the wrong time."

"That makes sense," Cody admitted. He hadn't given stealth the slightest thought.

"We can check out the basement, though. If there aren't any windows to the outside we can make it our base and not have to hide in the dark. Come on." Zack led him back to the door and pulled it open again. Lighting the way with his phone's screen, Zack led the way down the stairs and into the darkness and nearly fell off the last step. Cody's hand flashed out and grabbed the back of Zack's collar in a death grip. "I'm good, I'm good. My foot just slipped off the end of it."

They looked around in the dim blue light and saw that the basement was nowhere near as cluttered as the office back home but was well on its way of catching up. Clutter was everywhere and stacks of who knew what were clumped randomly on the tile floor and on what had once been a ping pong table. Zack turned his phone to the ceiling and worked his eyes around the top of the walls. "Two windows," he said, "but already conveniently blacked out with cardboard or something." He walked over and prodded the corners of the window coverings until he was sure they wouldn't let out any light. "

Now that he knew they were relatively safe, Zack turned his phone down to waist level and looked for a light switch. It echoed when he threw it and the boys flinched at the sudden sound.

"Arwin really needs to get a maid," Cody said as he looked around. "Look at all this crap. At least most of the stuff in his office might be useful. This is just junk." He picked up a half-smashed Dustbuster box to prove his point before tossing it back down.

"Do you think he has some tools down here?" Zack craned his neck to peer around some of the bigger piles. "The windows are covered so that almost has to mean he's done stuff down here. He has to have tools somewhere."

"I hope so. I don't want to even think about having to take the box apart with a bread knife." The twins split up and walked around the room, pulling and pushing things out of their way as they went. Zack walked past a quartet of vacuum cleaners and ducked under a cord hanging randomly from the ceiling. Cody walked around a bicycle that had never seen a single road mile before angling toward a wall with a washer and dryer. He lifted some towels from what he assumed was a drying rack and was pleased to see a bright red toolbox with lots of little drawers and shelves on the front.

"Got it," he called out and Zack scurried over and watched as Cody rifled through them.

"Like what you see?" he asked expectantly.

"If we need any size screw, bolt, or nail it's in here, that's for sure. And some wire, too, it seems." Cody opened the top of the bin and saw a large assortment of tools inside. "That's more like it."

"Everything you need?"

"Maybe. I have to be honest, Zack. I'm not sure what some of these are even for." He pulled a rather complex looking _thing _from the toolbox and examined before putting it gently back in its place.

"All you'll probably need is a screwdriver, Cody. It's just a loose wire or something like that."

"I hope so." He knew Zack was trying to encourage him but the ideas of dozens of circuit boards and flux capacitors and other crazy things inside the box tempered his enthusiasm.

"You can do it. I know you can." He patted Cody on the shoulder before heading up the steps and returning a few seconds later with their backpack.

"There isn't enough room down here," Cody said, only to watch Zack take an arm and sweep nearly everything from one half of the ping pong table to the floor. Boxes clunked randomly to the floor and papers flew in all directions.

"And now there is," Zack grinned as he flicked the remaining odds and ends from the table. He grabbed one of the towels from atop the dryer and wiped the rime of dust away. "What do you think?"

"Well, it's not a NASA clean room but I think it'll have to do," he said.

"It is compared to his office," Zack said and Cody couldn't argue. He unzipped the backpack and pulled the box out, taking great care to set it gently on the table. Cody stepped closer and all the wires and screens that had been fascinating in Arwin's office now turned daunting and foreboding as he looked at them. He pushed his hair back off his forehead and exhaled deeply. He stared at the device and soon found his palms were getting sweaty.

"Cody, dude, what's wrong?" Zack asked after his brother hadn't moved in almost a minute, his father's slang rolling unnoticed from his tongue. "Cody?" He gave him a slight shake.

"What?" Cody shook his head and things swam back into focus.

"You did it again."

"What'd I do?"

"You spaced out like before. Are you okay?"

"I'm nervous, Zack. No, not just nervous. I'm scared. What if I open the box up and there's things in there I can't figure out? What will we do then?"

"We'll go live with Dad and our grandparents, I guess. But I'll tell you this, Cody; I think you can fix it, but if for some reason you can't, it won't be from a lack of trying."

"Thanks, Zack."

"No problem. You know what? Let's forget about it for the night. We're tired and smelly and the box is going absolutely nowhere. Let's grab a shower in the dark and then call it a day. We can take a good look at it when we're fresh in the morning." Zack put a brotherly arm around Cody's shoulders and turned him away from the table.

"That might be the best idea you've had all day," Cody replied as they turned to the steps.

"The best idea I've had today was breaking into Arwin's house."

"No, this is still a terrible idea," Cody laughed. "Dibs on the first shower."

"Fine. Keep it short and sweet."

"You must have me mistaken with you. I'm not the one that drains the hot water heater every night."

"Hey," Zack exclaimed with a shrug, "I get dirty."

"I bet you do," Cody laughed.

"That's not how I meant that at all...Wow."

"Of course you didn't. That's what makes it even better."

"I don't even know what to say to that. Hit the shower already." He shook his head and waved his brother away. "Oh, no lights if there's a window in the room," he called out.

"Duh."

Cody rounded the corner into the bathroom but Zack stopped in the living room and examined the window blinds and curtains. He pushed a small gap open between two of the plastic strips and peered out into the street before pulling back when he saw it was empty. He rearranged the curtains to completely cover the sides of the windows to obscure them from any prying eyes.

Zack stepped away from the window and was planning on checking the rest of the windows in the house when his eyes fell upon the entertainment center. He stepped closer only to find himself staring at a row of pictures of his mother on one of the top shelves.

"What the hell, Arwin?" he whispered as he looked them over. "That one is her Facebook profile picture, that's from one of her albums, and that one's a promo shot from the Tipton." Zack growled low in his throat as he laid all three of the frames face down on the shelf. He walked away from the entertainment center before his unfocused anger could grow any further.

Zack decided to continue his tour of the house while his brother finished up in the shower, partly to ensure their invisibility from the outside, but also to see just what else might be laying around. He skipped the den and opened the door to the first room on his left and saw nothing but bare walls. He performed his security check and then left the empty room.

The next room was the same size as the first room but it had been decorated in what could only be _Middle American Guest Bedroom _style. None of the furniture quite matched and the sheets on the bed looked stiff and unused. Zack pawed through the dresser and found each drawer empty except the bottom which contained a spare set of sheets and blankets. He closed the drawers and left the room, shutting the door behind him.

_This has to be Arwin's bedroom, _Zack thought as he pushed the last door open. _Unless he doesn't sleep here. _ He flashed his phone around quickly and saw a bed that seemed to have been made by a drunkard. Flanking the bed on one side was a massive dresser with nearly every drawer open and clothes hanging out as if they were trying to escape. A hamper stood next to a night stand on the other side of the bed and Zack wondered how long it would be before gravity collapsed the tower of dirty clothes from the hamper to the stand. He whistled in awe of the scene.

"This makes my room look like a hospital ward," he whispered as he shook his head. He walked further into the disaster zone and heard the water shut off. He kicked random clothes out of his way as he poked around the room.

"Hey Zack? Where are you?"

"Back in Arwin's bedroom," he answered as he tried to open one of the closet doors. He pulled a little harder and it came partially open and a small avalanche of boxes and things slid down from a top shelf. "Son of a..." he muttered as he rubbed his forehead.

"You okay?" Cody appeared in the room wrapped in a towel with concern on his face.

"Yeah, I was attacked by Arwin's booby trapped closet," he said as he gave one last gingerly touch to the knot he could already feel forming just below his hairline.

"You're not bleeding at least." Cody looked down at the layer of junk that had fallen out of the closet and toed some of it over with his foot. "Why does he keep all this stuff?"

"I don't even know, Cody. It looks like he's a pack rat or a hoarder or something."

"If we do end up staying here, we could have a yard sale with all his junk and make enough money to buy whatever we need." Cody squatted down and picked up an unopened box with a picture of an alarm clock on its front.

"We won't be selling that box, though. No chance of that."

"Why not?"

"Because that is what hit me in the face. I'll be breaking it shortly."

"If you have to," Cody shrugged. "Anyway, the shower is all yours." Cody gestured toward the door and yawned. "I'll keep watch or something."

"Why don't you go ahead and hit the sack, Cody? You look like you're about to fall asleep on your feet. There's a spare bedroom across the hall that's actually clean."

"What about you?"

"After I clean up I'll either slide in there with you if you haven't taken up the whole bed or I'll sleep on one of the couches in the den."

"Just make sure you don't go to sleep commando style if you get in bed with me," Cody said as he yawned even bigger than before.

"A guy does something one time when he gets out of the shower exhausted and no one ever lets him forget about it," Zack grinned as he left the disaster of a bedroom for the steamy bathroom. He turned the water on before quickly stripping and climbing into the tub. Zack stood under the showerhead for a few long minutes before reaching for the soap. He cleaned up and rinsed off and wrapped a towel around his waist after shutting off the water.

He opened the door intent on heading downstairs to gather clean clothes from their bag when he noticed that Cody had left him a pair of underwear and a white t-shirt on the floor outside the door. He silently thanked his brother as he dried himself off and pulled up the underwear in the doorway. He was still hot from his shower and was in no mood for the shirt so he slung it over his shoulder.

He yawned and stretched and felt weariness hit him like a runaway train. His stomach had been attempting to talk him into a late-night snack while his brain wanted to explore the house further but Zack overruled them both and headed for the second bedroom. Cody had curled himself up into his usual little ball on the far side of the bed and Zack slid into the empty half. He relaxed into the mattress and sleep's grip was upon him before he knew it.

_Probably not the most action-packed chapter I've ever written but it had to be done to set up what's going to happen later on. As usual, let me know what you think about it._


	8. Chapter 8

Zack snapped awake early the next morning and experienced a huge disconnect as his brain tried to figure out why he was in a strange bed with a rather stiff mattress. He looked around the room with squinted eyes and saw that the first light of dawn was just beginning to filter through the blinds. He heard Cody's light breathing beside him and all the disparate pieces slowly slotted together. Zack rolled over with a harrumph tried to go back to sleep but he knew it would be a fruitless effort.

His mother and brother could never understand why his internal clock ticked so drastically different when school was in session compared to when it wasn't and Zack never knew either. It just did. On some level knew that he _should _be going to school today back in their Boston and he should sleep as late as he possibly could, but a deeper part of his mind knew that it was a summer Saturday here and there was a full day to waste so it woke him at the break of dawn.

With a grumble he rolled himself out of the bed and walked quietly from the room. He spared a glance back over his shoulder at Cody but decided to let him sleep in. While he had been tired last night, Cody had looked like the walking dead. His stomach led him to the kitchen and he wondered if Arwin was a breakfast eater. Zack scratched himself in a way that only boys can as he stood before the pantry and scanned it for any sort of cereal.

"Ah, Raisin Bran, the breakfast of old people," he said as he pulled the lone box from a shelf and set it on the counter. He retrieved the milk and a bowl and spoon in an instant and made himself a meal. Zack briefly considered sitting at the table but returned to the den instead, setting the bowl of cereal on the floor while he turned on the television. He was momentarily confused by the knobs beside the screen before remembering that they were in a time when children were usually the remote controls.

Channel surfing took all of ten seconds since most of the channels were filled with snow or the occasional test pattern and Zack wondered how people could live with so few stations. Where was Nickelodeon? Cartoon Network? Did Mtv even exist yet? He thought it might but wasn't sure. Zack shook his head as he went back through the few stations that were broadcasting. "Farm reports? Really?" he snorted in disbelief as the prices of corn appeared on the screen in blocky letters on one station before being replaced by whatever hog futures were.

Zack finally gave up and settled on what seemed to be a show about a hotel run by a man with gigantic sideburns and filled with what appeared to be Muppet knock-offs and garage sale dolls. "Wow," he muttered as he scooted backwards to lean against the couch. He ignored most of what was happening on the screen as he devoured his breakfast. The show, which Zack almost instantly pegged as being so bad that it could only be a 70s holdover, ended and he got up to make himself another bowl of cereal. He returned to his same spot as the credits rolled by and continued eating as the next show came on.

"Well here's something I haven't seen in about five years," Cody said and Zack nearly jumped out of his skin. "You sitting around watching tv and eating cereal in your underwear."

"You know, Cody, if school doesn't work out for you, I think you have a future as a ninja. Make some noise next time, huh? You just about gave me a heart attack." He glared at his grinning brother and noticed that his hands were behind his back. "What are you hiding?"

"Nothing..." the grin threatened to split Cody's face.

"It's your phone, isn't it? You took a picture, didn't you?" Zack's eyebrows knitted together.

"Maybe..."

"I don't think I need to remind you of the pain you will feel if you ever post that anywhere, do I?"

"Oh come on, you know I wouldn't do that but it was just too funny not to take. It can be one of our memories of the 80s."

"Not one of the better memories."

"In your opinion," Cody retorted before noticing the screen. "What on earth are you watching?"

"_KIDS_ _Incorporated_, apparently. From what I've seen so far, it's kind of like what _Glee _would be if _Glee_ didn't suck." As if on cue, the camera cut from a scene with mildly overacting teens to another with the same kids on a stage getting ready to perform. The boys watched as the kids belted out a fairly decent cover of _St. Elmo's Fire_. Cody found himself tapping a foot as the song went on.

"He can really sing," Zack noted a bit enviously after one of the young singers finished a solo.

"Pondering a new career path, are you?"

"Possibly. I know I could do that." Cody didn't argue because, although he sang rarely to begin with and almost never when anyone was around, Zack did have talent.

"_KIDS Incorporated _starring Zack Martin?"

"Maybe. If we stay here we have to go to Hollywood and see-holy crap!" Zack switched subjects in mid stride, "Cody, do you know who that is?" He pointed to the girl in the middle of the screen.

"Well, considering that I've never seen this show before in my entire life, no."

"That's Fergie."

"Who?"

"Jeez, Cody. The girl from the Black Eyed Peas. Fergalicious?"

"No it's not."

"I'm telling you it is. I remember hearing that she was on some old kid show and this has to be it."

"She's what? Our age here?"

"Maybe a little older but who cares. She's hot in our time but here in the 80s? Oh yeah."

"Do you, uh, need a minute? I can go brush my teeth or something." Cody faked awkwardness and looked around the room.

"No, I'm good," Zack laughed. "Why are you up so early? You looked like death warmed over last night."

"Thanks for that, I guess. I woke up needing to use the bathroom and heard the television so I came out here. At first I figured that since I'm up, I might as well stay up but now I'm reconsidering. I'm still tired."

"Go on back to bed. It's not even eight yet and trust me, you aren't missing anything on tv right now."

"I think I will. Save me some cereal for later, would you?"

"There's still plenty. I just opened the box."

"Thanks. I'll see you again in an hour or two," Cody told him as he headed back down the hallway. Zack heard the toilet flush and then his brother climbing back into bed a few seconds later. He leaned back and put his elbows on the couch as he took stock of the situation, quickly deciding that no matter what Cody may say or think, once you took the fact they were in the technology-deprived 80s out of the equation, they weren't in too bad of a spot.

"There's no one to tell me that I'm too old to sit around in my underwear and to put clothes on, no one to tell us when to go to bed or when to eat, no one to say we can't do something," he said softly to himself and grinned. "This is like vacation." Zack picked up the bowl and its remaining milk and slurped it down.

He finished watching _KIDS Incorporated _and then sat through another mindless show before he began to grow restless. Zack took the bowl back into the kitchen and set it in the sink and saw the phone hanging on the wall next to the refrigerator. His eyes flitted to the clock above the stove and saw that it was a few minutes after nine. "Nine is okay to call someone, right? Curtis is up by now for sure."

Zack went down into the basement to retrieve his father's phone number from the backpack and scurried back upstairs. He unfolded the scrap of paper and picked the receiver from the hook and settled it between his ear and shoulder while he dialed the number, switching his weight from foot to foot while it rang. Zack was beginning to think that he'd called too early when he heard his father's voice say _hello _after the fourth ring.

"Hey, Curtis, it's Zack. I didn't wake you up, did I?"

"Oh no way. I've been up for a while already. I was just outside messing with the chain on my bike."

"Good. I was hoping you were up," Zack told him. "Anyway, it looks like my parents want us out of the way for a while today and I was-"

"Oh, sweet!" Curtis interrupted. "Do you guys want to go swimming? It's supposed to be like a million degrees today and I think it sounds like a great idea."

"That's what I was going to ask you, actually."

"Awesome! The pool opens at eleven and there's a snack bar where we can eat lunch if we get hungry and since you two are thirteen we don't need a grown up to go with us or anything!" Zack's mind's eye could see the boy vibrating with excitement around the kitchen.

"I guess that settles it then," Zack told the boy. "We'll be over by a quarter til eleven or so, okay?"

"Sounds good, dude. I'll see you guys then!" Zack cringed as Curtis slammed the phone back on the cradle before gently hanging up on his end. He walked from the kitchen to the den and was about to sit on the couch when he realized that going swimming meant that he'd have to have swim trunks. Cody, too. "Crap," he muttered.

Zack hurriedly dressed himself and picked up his wallet, hoping to make a quick run to K-mart and get back early enough to make it to Curtis' house on time. He searched through a few drawers in the kitchen before finding a notepad and a well-chewed stub of a pencil. Never one for words, the note he left on the table for his brother simply read _BRB, Gone to store, Zack. _

He returned to the den and peered out into the backyard from behind the curtains, checking that each side was clear. Satisfied that he'd be unobserved, he thumbed the latch on the glass door and slowly slid it open, only stepping out from behind the curtain once he'd created an opening just big enough to fit through. Zack hopped out and slid the door closed and sprinted for the trees.

It might not have been a million degrees like Curtis had forecast but Zack's shirt was clinging to his chest and back like a wet blanket by the time he reached the store. He opened the door and the outrushing cold air felt so heavenly that he hesitated a second before stepping inside. Being the K-mart veteran that he was, Zack headed straight back to the boys' department instead of wandering around through the store like before.

"Okay, if I were swim trunks, where would I be?" he asked quietly after rooting through the area for a moment. He looked up and almost instantly had the answer to his question. "Probably right over there underneath that big sign that says _swimwear_ hanging from the ceiling_,_" he grumbled and headed for the glossy image of a pale, freckled boy holding a giant beach ball over his head. "You might want to get yourself some sunscreen, buddy," he mumbled to the sign as he stood under it.

Zack busied himself, sliding the hangers quickly along the racks of trunks in their size, as he searched for a single diamond in the rough of ugly swimwear. Luck was finally on his side when he found a red pair that wasn't as exquisitely awful as the rest. He plucked it from the rack and set about picking one for his brother. Zack picked a nearly solid white pair from the rack with an evil grin but put it back and selected a green pair with random splotches of color instead.

He made his way back to the front of the store and looked for the shortest checkout lane. Zack gritted his teeth as they all seemed to be overflowing with early shoppers. "Crap. Come on," he said anxiously. He was headed to the shortest of the long lines when the light over an empty lane suddenly flipped on. "That's more like it," Zack said as he changed course and narrowly beat a mother and her three young children to the register.

"If it isn't my boy from Boston," the clerk said as he put the clothes on the belt. Zack looked up at her and saw that it was Marla.

"Oh, hey, you uh, remember me," he said as she pulled the trunks from the hangers. Zack instantly wished he'd gone to another line.

"It took me longer than it should have but I do. I saw you walking by and knew I'd seen you somewhere before but I couldn't figure out where until you walked over. My mind is usually like an iron trap. Where's your brother today?" Marla adjusted her glasses tried to make out the price on the tag.

"He's, um, probably still sleeping, I guess. He's pretty lazy."

"Well, school's finally out now so I guess he gets a few days to recover, right?" she grinned and entered the price of the first suit.

"I'm betting it'll be more like a month. Maybe even two," Zack replied and couldn't help smiling back. He was warming to the woman and her matronly charm despite his best efforts to remain aloof.

"I bet he'll be up and around by the time you get back with these," Marla told him after she punched in the second price. "It's supposed to be a scorcher today. I wish I was going to a pool, too."

Zack pictured the cashier in a bikini and barely held back a grimace. "Yeah, it's already hot now but we met a friend yesterday and he invited us to go with him." Zack wanted to smash his palm against his forehead as the words kept flowing from his mouth.

Marla finished her button punching and Zack handed over a few bills. "Tell your brother I said hello and you boys have fun today," she said as she handed him a bag with the trunks inside.

"We will, thanks." Zack strode from the lane and headed for the door. He was reaching a hand out to push it open when he saw the small restaurant out of the corner of his eye and spun on his heels. He went to the counter and got a large Icee to take with him on the walk back. Zack picked a straw from the dispenser and stuck it through the lid as he walked out the door with hopes that his drink wouldn't melt before he got back to the main road.

"Where have you been?" Cody asked as soon as Zack ducked inside the patio door. He was sitting on one of the couches with his hands in his lap and a worried look on his face.

"Didn't you see my note? I left it on the table."

"Yes, I saw it but still, Zack, anything could have happened. We aren't in our own time, you know."

"Look, _Mom, _I'm fine," Zack said, instantly becoming defensive. "I went to K-mart to get something and I came right back." He tossed the bag to Cody and sat on the other couch.

"What are these?" Cody asked as he pulled the trunks out of the bag.  
"They're turkey sandwiches, Cody. What do you think they are?"

"Swim trunks. Why did you buy swim trunks?"

"Because we're going swimming with Curtis today."

"We're what? Why?"

"Because I called him earlier after you went back to sleep and he invited us."

"Zack," Cody said, lowering his head and covering his face with a hand, "have you completely forgotten what our situation is?"

"Of course not."

"Then why are you out spending money on swim trunkswhen you know, or _should_ know, that we only have so much we can spend?" He waved the red pair around before dropping them on the cushion.

"They weren't that much, Cody."

"That doesn't really matter. However much they were, and you probably shouldn't tell me how much they were right now, that money is gone. Gone."

"We've already saved at least that much from what we've eaten from Arwin's refrigerator."

"That's not the _point_, Zack! The point of saving the money is not spending it in case we need it later," Cody snapped. He threw his hands up in frustration and flopped against the back of the couch. Times like this made him want to throttle his brother. He pointed at Zack and was about to unload another salvo on his brother but changed his mind and closed his mouth before something caustic came out, settling for an indignant shake of the head instead.

Zack watched Cody seethe on the couch while he tried to figure out what to say. More than a few different ideas of ways to avoid the blame raced through his mind but in the end he discarded all of them and was truthful.

"Look, I'm sorry, okay? I didn't think. Take this," Zack told him as he dug his wallet from a pocket and lofted it to his brother, "so I can't do it again."

Zack's offering and the sound of earnest contrition in his voice quenched most of Cody's anger almost instantly. He looked up and saw Zack's face matched his voice. "Zack..."

"You're right, Cody. I screwed up. I got caught up in the moment and didn't think about anything else."

"I shouldn't have gotten so worked up over some shorts. That was dumb and I'm just stressed out." He tossed Zack's wallet back to him underhand. "Keep it."

"Do you want me to take the trunks back? I think the receipt is still somewhere in the bag."

"No, they can stay. If you go swimming with Dad, you'll keep yourself busy and out of my hair while I see what's inside the box."

"You aren't going to come with us? I told him we'd both be there. Pretty soon, too," he added as he glanced at the clock above the television.

"The box, Zack... It's not going to fix itself."

"What if we just stay for a couple of hours? Swim around for a while, catch a few rays, and then we'll come home so you can take it apart. How's that sound?"

"I don't know, Zack."

"C'mon, it'll be fun. We can check out some Eighties babes in bikinis. Maybe they'll ask us to put some lotion on their backs or something." Zack was unconsciously rubbing his hands together.

"Fine," Cody grumbled after a few seconds. "Someone has to chaperone you or else you'll get the cops called after you chase some poor girl around the pool with sunblock."

"She shouldn't play hard to get then," Zack smiled.

"Yeah, that's exactly what she'll be doing." Cody rolled his eyes and got up. "Which one is mine," he asked, holding a swimsuit in each hand.

"The green one."

"Of course it is. I'll be right back." Cody dropped the red pair and headed out of the room.

"Where are you going?"

Cody poked his head back around the corner. "I'm going to change now. I don't know about you, but the absolute last thing I want is to see Dad naked in the pool's locker room. That would be just too weird."

Having neither the insane sense of privacy and modesty like his brother nor really caring if he changed with his friend, Zack just shrugged as Cody disappeared. He busied himself with the tag on his new shorts and was still struggling to pull it off when Cody returned with two bath towels under his arm. The tag finally snapped off and he absently set it on top of the television. "You ready? We need to leave in a minute or two."

"Let me grab my backpack to put all of our stuff in and I'll be ready." Cody trotted down the steps and came back with the pack. He stuffed the towels in and then added his regular shorts and wallet as well. Zack tossed his new shorts up in the air and Cody deftly held the pack open wide enough to led them fall in untouched.

Now ready, the boys snuck out the patio door and made off into the woods. They angled around behind a set of newly constructed houses and set out on the sidewalk. Zack was wishing he had another Icee since he was already well on the way to resoaking his shirt. "Does it ever get this hot in Boston?" he asked, panting.

"Sometimes, but definitely never this early in the year," Cody answered. "It's the humidity that's killing us, though. I feel like I could grab a handful of air and wring out enough water to fill a tub."

"Marla said hello, by the way," Zack said after a few minutes of quiet walking.

"You talked to her?"

"Yep. It's like you said the other day, she's just too nice not to. I feel a little bad for giving you crap for talking to her."

"I've been thinking about that and I don't think it really matters. I was hoping she wouldn't remember us so that kind of shoots down one of my theories."

"This is the part where I'm supposed to ask you 'what theory?' and you tell me, right?"

"I wasn't expecting you to but I will," Cody said and Zack groaned dramatically. "I was hoping that since we weren't from this time, we'd be, well..._slippery_, I guess. People would see us and forget about us almost immediately."

"What about Curtis? He definitely remembers us."

"Dad's different because we've been around him a lot. People we've not spent a bunch of time with, like the cashiers at the gas stations, Marla, or maybe even Grandma Martin, would forget about us if they don't see us."

"You might be an ordinary little blond kid but I like to think that I'm unforgettable," Zack joked.

"Oh, you're definitely that," Cody smirked. "But like I said, it was just a theory that is now officially shot down. We're on our third day in 1986 and we still don't know anything."

"I know something," Zack told his brother. "I know that Curtis will probably lose his mind the second he sees us."

Cody laughed. "Dad is a little excitable, isn't he?"

"That might be the understatement of the year."

Zack turned out to be right. They rounded the corner to their father's street and almost immediately saw a goldenrod yellow tank top and bright blue shorts jumping up and down and waving at them. "Told you."

_I always try to reply to reviews so I'd like to apologize for not getting back to those of you who reviewed the last two chapters. For some reason, ff.n isn't notifying me when a review or pm comes in and I can't figure out why. At first I thought that everyone was either busy with school finishing up for the year and the vacations that come with that or you guys were just tired of the story. I signed in to the site today to upload this chapter and and saw a bunch of reviews and a pm waiting for me which tossed those two ideas out the door. So, my bad guys. I'll have to check back on here regularly instead of waiting for my phone to tell me._

_Anyway, _KIDS Incorporated _was one of my favorite shows back in the 80s. It has that special combination of awful and awesome that made it great. Of course, after watching more than a few episodes on youtube recently, I can safely say that there's much more awful in it than I ever knew at the time. However, it's still tons better than _Glee _could ever hope to be._

_I guess that's all so let me know what you think about the story. _

_SI_


	9. Chapter 9

The twins thought there was a very good chance that Curtis would jackhammer his way through the sidewalk's concrete with his bouncing so they picked up their pace a bit. Curtis met them at the edge of his driveway and Cody was positive that if their father had been a year or two younger, he'd have jumped up and given them a dual bear hug instead of a more restrained and mature high five.

"This is going to be so much fun!" he exclaimed. "Let me get my bag and we can get going."

"Sounds good," Zack told him and Curtis dashed off, all but leaving a cloud of dust behind with the sound of his little flip flops smacking against his heels.

The twins heard voices from inside the house and four seconds passed before the screen door opened and Curtis tumbled out of it. "I will, Mom. Jeez!" Zack and Cody saw their grandmother had appeared in the doorway with the same bemused expression on her face their mother usually wore. "Come on, let's go already," Curtis said as he rejoined them with a bag not much smaller than he was slung over one shoulder.

"What was all that about?" Cody asked as they made their way down the sidewalk.

"Oh man, you know how moms are. She told me like a hundred times to behave and make sure I put on my sunscreen." He put his hands on his hips and slipped into an impression of his mother. "Now Curtis, I don't want you coming home looking like a lobster again so don't forget it. Ask your friends to put some on your back if you can't reach it."

"There you go, Zack. You can put lotion on someone's back after all," Cody laughed.

"Not quite who I was expecting," Zack replied and Curtis looked at them with a questioning eye. "We were talking earlier about maybe getting asked by a hot babe to help them out," he explained. "We'll help you if you need it, though."

"Nah, I'm good. I can do it, see?" he reached an arm over his shoulder and rubbed around his upper back.

"Looks like it," Cody told him, already deciding that he'd tell Curtis he'd missed a blob of lotion and cover the spots the boy couldn't reach. He clapped his father on the shoulder.

"So what's the deal with this pool, Curtis?" Zack asked during their walk. "Is there a diving board?"

"There isn't just one, Zack. There's three." Curtis turned around and walked backwards while he explained. "One of them is a few feet above the water, right? The next one is ten feet and the last one is like thirty feet!" Curtis raised his hand higher as he mentioned each board, with his hand raised well over his head for the final board. "The big one doesn't have a board on it but it's like a runway. You can run as fast as you can and fly!" Curtis stuck his arms out and hopped side to side.

"Awesome!" Zack replied. "Isn't that great, Cody?"

"Oh, uh, yeah, that's super," Cody answered as his stomach twisted in knots at the thought of jumping from a board more than a few inches in the air. A long list of everything he'd rather do in life scrolled through his mind. Eating an entire shovelful of dirt and going through a whole school day in his mother's underwear topped the endless list.

"We have to go off that one first," Zack told the others. "Right away so no one chickens out."

"Well, I've never gone off of it before," Curtis admitted as he turned back around and rejoined the twins, "but I'll do it if you guys do." Zack instantly added that he was in while Cody found an interesting cloud to look at as they walked.

"What about you, Cody?" Curtis asked after a few silent steps.

"Well...I'm not really much of a diver. I'm more of a doggy paddler," he admitted. "If you need a cannonball from the side of the pool, I'm your guy."

Curtis accepted Cody's statement with a nod and a shrug but Zack wouldn't let it go. "Oh come on, Cody. You can do it. You go up there, take a deep breath, and jump off the edge. Nothing to it. We're both going to do it."

"Zack..." Cody said plaintively.

"Okay, okay. We'll see when we get there," Zack said and let the subject drop.

A few sweaty minutes later the boys arrived at the pool. Cody could see the high dive as they walked down the sidewalk and he swallowed hard. The trio stood in line as the clock ticked down to opening time and were let in along with the two dozen or so others for a dollar apiece after the clock finally hit eleven. Curtis lead them down a hallway that ended with doors marked _men_ on one side and _women_ on the other, pointing to the men's door as they reached it. "We go in here." Zack barely contained a laugh.

They stepped inside and the smells of musty locker room and clinical chlorine intermingled in their noses. They followed the other dads and boys through the twists and turns of the locker room until Curtis branched off from the herd to an out of the way corner of the room. He plopped his bag on the bench and Zack did the same with his pack.

Voices echoed off the walls of the room, most higher and definitely pre-teen but with a few with a much deeper adult pitch, while Zack and Curtis rooted through towels and other things to find their trunks. "Aren't you going to change?" Curtis asked Cody once he pulled his bright red shorts from his bag.

"I'm already wearing my trunks," he replied.

"Oh, okay. We'll just take a second then," Curtis replied as he abruptly dropped his pants. Cody, slightly red-faced, swiveled away on a heel just as Zack stripped off his shorts and did his best to avoid seeing a pale cheek or any dangling parts. He study the stucco on the ceiling while the boys changed.

Soon enough they were strolling out of the locker room and onto the pool deck. Sunlight dazzled off the water and made Cody squint as he took in the sights. To their right was the shallow end and to the left was the deep end and the even deeper diving well. His eyes traveled up the long concrete tower of the high dive and he swallowed hard. "Absolutely no chance," he whispered to himself and turned for shallow waters before being redirected by a steady hand.

"That side's for babies," Zack told him. "Let's go over there." He pointed to a cluster of chairs at the nine-foot end. Cody sighed and followed the others around the pool, refusing to look at the diving boards as they passed them on their circuit. They picked out three chairs with a commanding view of the pool and dropped their bags and towels on them. Curtis pulled his shirt off and tossed it aside while simultaneously kicking off his flip flops. The twins followed him at a more leisurely pace.

"I guess I'd better put this goop on," Curtis announced as he pulled out the tube of sunblock and squeezed thin white worms on each arm before dabbing a smiley face on his chest. "You guys can use some if you want, too," he offered. Zack and Cody cupped their hands and received a generous squirt each. Cody did as he promised and got the untouched spot between his father's shoulder blades.

"We're supposed to wait like ten minutes for it to soak in to our skin but I won't tell if you won't," Curtis said conspiratorially.

"Sounds good to me," Zack impishly replied. "Come on, Cody! It's time to dive."

"Um, you guys go ahead. I'm, uh, I need to use the bathroom."

"Oh you do _not_. Quit being a girl and let's go."

"Zack..."

"It's not going to kill you."

"It might."

"Fine. Curtis, us guys will go jump off the board and have fun while my sister here does her nails," Zack said as he steered his father in the direction of the diving well.

"Uh, okay I guess," Curtis replied as they started walking.

Peer pressure and the desire to remain alive battled inside Cody as he watched the two head for the boards. Logically, he knew that he wouldn't fall anywhere near fast enough to seriously hurt himself even if the board was twice as high, but irrationally the board was already almost a mile in the sky. Cody frowned as he looked at the edge of the highest tower and saw 10M stenciled across it in black paint. "Thirty two feet," he said as his brain instantly translated the numbers from metric. "I can do it."

He took a step, hesitated, and took another before stopping dead in his tracks. "Dammit, Zack," he said as he summoned the little bravery he possessed. He walked fast and caught up with the others just as they reached the short line to the high tower. His father high-fived him as he walked up.

"Glad you could make it." Cody only nodded, partially worried that his resolve to jump might escape if he opened his mouth.

"You know I was only kidding with you, right, Cody?" Zack said softly. "You really don't have to do this." He saw Curtis' cocked head and explained. "He's scared of heights."

"Oh wow. And you're going to jump off of _that_?" the boy looked up at the board. Cody followed his gaze and swore the top of it disappeared into the clouds.

"I'm going to, yeah." He shivered and crossed his arms over his chest as he said the words.

"That's so cool!" Curtis said as the sound of wet feet slapping on concrete was chased by a yell of exhilaration and a massive splash.

"Yeah, so cool," Cody echoed with much less enthusiasm. He watched as a mop of red hair broke the surface and kicked to the side of the pool. Cody rolled his eyes when a boy half their age climbed the ladder and gave two thumbs up to a nearby group and received a round of applause.

Another two kids went up the ladder and disappeared from view before reappearing in eruptions of water and joy. "Well, who's first?" Curtis asked as the three boys were now at the front of the line.

"It's your pool," Zack told him. "You can go if you want. Unless Cody wants to."

"No no, you're right, it's Curtis' pool. He can go first." His father shrugged and started climbing up. He knew he should have gone first but couldn't quite do it. They watched as Curtis reached the top and hoisted himself up on the platform. The boy peeked over the side and waved before hopping out of view. Cody was just beginning to wonder if his father was having second thoughts when a yell split the air and Curtis launched himself out into nothingness. They watched as he was seemingly suspended in mid-air for long seconds before plummeting back down in a geyser of water.

"What did he say?"

"It sounded like tomcat_. Top Gun_ came out this year," Zack said.

"Huh?"

"The movie with the planes? Tom Cruise before he got all weird? Goose and Maverick? I know you've seen it."

"If you say so," Cody shrugged. His mind was busy focusing on the act of supreme idiocy he would be performing in the very near future. Curtis broke the surface and slowly swam to the side with a face-splitting smile. "Go ahead, Zack."

"You aren't going to walk away once I climb the ladder, are you?"

"No, I'm going. Just not quite yet."

"See you on the other side then," Zack said and climbed the rungs. Cody saw Curtis climb out and pump a fist.

"It was awesome!" his father said and looked up at the tower with his hands shading his eyes.

Zack threw himself from the tower with his limbs spread before pulling them back and hitting the water in an awkward but graceful dive. He popped back up a few seconds later and whooped with glee.

Cody took a deep breath and put both hands on the ladder and started his climb. His feet seemed to be filled with lead as he slowly made his way up. His eyes were nearly closed as reached the halfway point and his arms were shaking when he finally made it to the top. Cody pulled himself up and held on to the railing with death grips. He looked over the side of the platform and sucked in a gasping breath as he saw the water so far, far below.

"That was stupid," he muttered as he tried to gather himself. "Very, very stupid." Cody gazed out over the platform and saw their chairs and the fence and field beyond them. His father and Zack looked so small when he mistakenly gazed down at them.

"Come on, Cody! You can do it!" Curtis yelled in encouragement and Zack echoed the call.

Cody looked at his hands and saw his knuckles were white. He relaxed them and let them fall to his sides. "Okay, I can do this," he told himself as he tried to psyche himself up.

"Quit waiting for the sunscreen to dry and jump already!" Zack called and Cody felt himself smile. He took a deep breath and started moving before he could think twice about it. Right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot. Cody picked up speed as the edge of the platform approached at nearly the speed of light. The toes of his right foot landed a fraction of an inch from the end and Cody jumped.

Time slowed down as he reached the apex of his jump. He looked down and saw his father with his arms raised up in victory and Zack with a look of astonishment across his face. Gravity reasserted its control and began pulling him down and time sped back up and jumping from a ten meter platform suddenly became the worst idea he'd ever had and holy crap he was going to die. His eyes widened as the water raced up at him and Cody pulled his arms and legs in to the classic cannonball position. _Ooooohhhh shiiiiiiiit! _flew through his mind just before he plunged into the water.

His momentum carried him nearly to the bottom of the pool before he started kicking his way back up. He swam to the side and was all but dragged from the water by his brother and father.

"How was it?" Curtis asked excitedly.

Cody pushed his wet hair out of his eyes before responding. "Terrifying and incredible rolled into one." He glanced back at the high dive and couldn't believe he'd actually done it.

"I really wish you could see your face when you were about halfway down," Zack laughed. "It was priceless."

"I think you did great, Cody," his father said.

"Thanks, Curtis."

"You want to go again?" Zack asked, already knowing the answer.

"Not on your life," he laughed. "You guys go ahead. I'll watch." Zack and Curtis scampered off and Cody slid into the water by the rope that separated the deep end from the diving well. He crossed his arms on it and lazily treaded water while they tried to out-jump each other. It wasn't long before they had tired themselves out and the trio moved to the shallow end to splash around.

An hour passed and it was twelve-thirty before they knew it. Their fun was interrupted by a long whistle blast from the lifeguards. "What's that for?" Zack asked.

"That means it's time for us to take a break," Curtis told him as he started swimming to the side of the pool. The twins followed him and pulled themselves out and were trundling to their chairs when Zack saw a man jump in.

"What's he doing? It's supposed to be break time, right?"

"It's break time for _us_, Zack. Grown-ups can swim if they want."

"Well that's not fair. They get to swim by themselves just because they're old?"

"Honestly, I wouldn't want to swim with us, either," Cody piped in as he pulled towels out of his backpack.

"Whatever. I'm hungry anyway so let's get some lunch." Zack wiped his face and quickly toweled his hair.

"My mom sent a bunch of sandwiches for us," Curtis said as he pulled his towel and a plastic bag with sandwiches and ice from his pack. "I think there's some cokes in here, too." He rummaged around and produced three cans of grocery store-brand soft drinks.

"Those aren't Cokes," Zack said as he examined a green can carefully. "What's a Citrus Drop?"

Curtis looked perplexed. "What are you talking about? These are cokes."

"I think we're in little-c country, Zack," Cody said with a grin. "Not big-c."

"You don't call these cokes? What do you call them?" Curtis asked.

"That's a soda back in Boston. If it was a famous cola and came in a red can we'd call it a Coke. Capital C."

"That's weird." Curtis looked at his can and shrugged. "Whatever you call it, it still tastes good. Now let's go eat." The boys left their clothes and bags behind and headed over to the picnic area. The found a shady spot under a tree near the little snack bar and unpacked their lunch and dug in. Zack quickly discovered that a Citrus Drop was almost a Mountain Dew. Almost, but not quite.

"Tell your mom thanks for making lunch for us again, Curtis," Cody said after he finished half of his first sandwich. Zack, mouth full with the remains of his second, nodded his agreement.

"I will," their father replied. "Oh, speaking of my mom, she said to tell you that the next time you come over, you can get your shirt back. She said it was too nice to just throw away so she got all my blood out of it."

"Oh...she really didn't have to do that," Zack said, giving a worried glance to his brother.

"Well, she did. It's folded up on my dresser right now." Zack was hoping the conversation wouldn't go any further but after his father took a bite, it did. "I saw the NBA logo on it but I've never heard of a team called the Heat in Miami. I asked my dad about it and he hadn't either."

"That's because they don't exist yet," Zack quickly responded and Cody kicked him in the shin with his heel. "What I mean is that they aren't a team yet but they will be soon."

"How'd you get their shirt then?"

"My, uh, uncle travels a lot on business and he got it for me the last time he was down there. I guess he knows someone who knows someone, you know?"

"I guess so. It's still a pretty cool shirt." Zack agreed it was and moved to change the subject.

"You didn't bring your wallet with you, did you Cody?"

"I don't have it on me now but it's in the bag. Why?"

"Because the burgers over there," he pointed to the snack bar, "smell delicious."

"You're still hungry?" Curtis asked with amazement.

"Kinda, yeah," Zack said sheepishly.

"Ever since he hit puberty his stomach turned into a black hole, Curtis," Cody laughed.

"I thought you were supposed to get all hairy when you get that," Curtis said innocently.

"I've got some! Okay, a few," he added after Cody snickered. "I'm going to get that money now." Zack quickly walked away from the giggling duo.

"He's not mad at me, is he?"

"Zack? No, he's just not used to being the butt of the joke. He'll forget about it pretty quick."

Cody was right. By the time Zack returned with with a burger and a plate of fries, any memory of the earlier talk was long buried. He devoured the burger and the boys all picked at the fries and talked about anything that came to mind. Finally sated, Zack leaned back on his elbows and stuck his stuffed belly out with a groan.

"You full now?" Cody asked as he flicked cold water from the ice bag on his brother's stomach. Zack yelped and sat back up.

"For an hour or two, yes."

The boys sat around for another few minutes before cleaning up their mess and tossing it away. They hopped in the shallow end and lazily swam back to their chairs. Towels stretched out over the vinyl straps, the boys laid down and enjoyed the early afternoon sunshine. Zack had just flipped over onto his back and was starting to doze again when the red glare disappeared from behind his eyelids. He opened one eye to see the redheaded boy from the high dive standing over him and blocking the sun.

"Um, hello," Zack said.

"Hey," the boy replied and stood there.

"Can I help you?"

"Oh, right. You see those girls over there?" Zack raised up on his elbows and looked across the pool to see a group of girls about his age trying to look inconspicuous.

"Them? Yeah."

"They wanted me to tell you they think you're cute and want to know if you're going to the dance tonight. The blonde one says she really hopes you are."

"Dance?" he looked at his brother and Curtis but they shrugged.

"It's at the rec center," the boy said as if it was the obvious thing in the world. "Didn't you see the fliers for it when you walked in?"

"I must have missed it," Zack admitted.

"There's a stack of them right by the door and another by the desk. So should I tell them you're coming or not?"

Zack took another look over the water and liked what he saw. "I wasn't planning on it but now I might have to."

"Is that a yes?"

Zack looked at his brother for approval and got an eye roll before Cody laid back down. "I'll have to ask my parents but I'll be there if they say it's okay."

"Okay, thanks," the boy said and skipped to the edge of the pool and jumped in. The trio watched as he swam over to the girls and said something that set them giggling before wandering off again.

"Did you really just get asked out by a group of girls that you've never met before?" Cody asked as he covered his face with his shirt. He hummed the refrain of a particular Carly Rae Jepsen song that he knew Zack liked and Zack shook his head.

"It looks like it. Curtis, do you know any of them?"

The boy sat up and squinted. "I don't _know them _know them. I've seen them here a few times. They seem nice."

"Anyone want to go dancing tonight?" Zack asked as he laid on his back with a big smile on his face.

"I dance about as well as I dive so I think I'll sit this one out. Besides, I have something to take care of when we get home, remember?" Cody told him pointedly.

"Oh, right. Curtis? What about you?"

"I can't. We have a game tonight."

"You don't sound to happy about it."

"Unless Coach Arwin gets back before the game, Jimmy's dad is going to have to coach us."

"Ouch," Cody said. "He's not good, huh?"

"He knows about as much about baseball as my mom does but no one else will do it. We're going to lose so bad." He flopped down on his towel and sighed.

"You never know, Curtis. You guys might pull it off."

"I doubt it. I just hope Coach is okay because I want to win some games this year."

The boys spend another two hours swimming and laying out before they decided they'd had enough for the day. "I'm probably going to go home and take a nap before we get destroyed tonight," Curtis said as they packed up and walked to the locker room

They found their little spot from that morning and dropped their bags on the same bench. Zack was drying his legs off when he saw Cody leaning against a locker and staring off into space.

"You might want to change out of those trunks, Cody. I don't think you want to walk all the way home with wet shorts on."

"Huh? Why not?" he looked down at his shorts and watched a few drops of water drip from the bottom.

"That mesh'll rub you raw down there," Curtis said as he unceremoniously stripped. "I made that mistake once and it hurt for like a week."

"He's shy, Curtis. We won't look, Cody, we promise."

"Oh, sure. Go ahead, Cody," his father said as they both turned away and dried themselves. Cody groaned inwardly as he made sure there were no other spectators around and proceeded to shatter the world record for changing out of a swimsuit. A young boy and his father rounded the corner just before Cody could pull his underwear up and he nearly died.

"Heights and public nudity," Zack said with the hint of a smile on his face once they were all dressed again. "Any other fears of yours that you want to get over today?"

"No, I think I've done enough of that for one day. Ask me again in about three years and we'll see how it goes."

"Sounds good." Zack put a hand on his brother's shoulder and Curtis, in an act of brotherhood, reached up and put his hand on the other.

The boys left the pool and had nearly reached the road when Zack realized he hadn't grabbed a flier for the dance so he ran back while the others waited. He picked one up and quickly skimmed over it before stuffing it in a pocket and ran back to the others. They walked Curtis home and, after thanking his mother in person and guaranteeing that Curtis had behaved himself, were on their way again.

"Are you sure you don't want to come tonight?" Zack asked after they'd walked a few minutes. He pulled the sheet of paper back out and offered it to his brother. "It sounds like fun and look," he said as he pointed to a particular line, "admission is free."

"It does sound good but I can't. You know that."

"I thought I'd try. Think about it, though...the Martin brothers on the prowl for hot chicks from decades before they were born."

Cody couldn't help himself and laughed. "As awesome as that sounds, I'm going to have to pass on it. I need to take the box apart so we can get home."

"Your Feed the Bees account will be there when you get back, Cody. This could be the best thing ever for you."

"It's Feed the Beast and how, exactly, could this be the best thing ever for me?"

"Because we are in a place that we'll maybe never see again with people we'll maybe never see again, right?"

"Right..." Cody could not begin to imagine where Zack was going with this line of thought.

"So...why not do all the things you've always wanted to do but have been scared to do back home? 2013 Cody Martin would never walk up and kiss a random girl but 1986 Cody Martin has the chance to do it and no one will ever know and it won't even matter if she tells all her friends that you kiss like a yeti."

"A yeti? Oh come on-" Cody tried to argue but Zack was in a groove and talked over him.

"Or maybe it's not even kissing anyone. It could just be talking to a pretty someone about things that aren't school. Think about it, Cody. This could be practice for when we get back home." Cody was silent and Zack could tell he was thinking about it. "You can't tell me that my idea doesn't have a pretty good upside, can you?"

"I can't, you're right, but the home thing is what's making me not want to do it. Mom has to be worried sick by now. No, worried isn't nearly the right word for it. She's probably pulled her hair out by now."

"Yeah, I can easily see her calling every last cop on the east coast for an update every three minutes," Zack said.

"Well, unless they have quark-gluon plasma detectors they won't have a clue where we went."

"If they don't have a _what_?"

"Never mind, it's part of a theory."

"And you and Mom wonder why I don't pay attention in science class. Sheesh."

"We're studying plant and animal cells now, Zack, not Einstein-Bose condensates. That's not really a good excuse."

"It doesn't matter." Zack was quiet for a whole two paces before Cody could all but see the giant light bulb turn on over his head. "You know what else doesn't matter? Mom worrying at all if we go back in time to the moment we left!"

Zack had blurted his idea out so fast that Cody was left trying to translate it to English. "What?"

"If we go back to our time right when we left, Mom won't have to worry about us being missing because we won't have ever been gone!"

"That's a big _if_ but, technically, you're right," Cody admitted after he thought it over.

"I have to be right. Arwin's done it for years, hasn't he? No one's ever suspected anything so it has to be possible."

"True."

"So you're coming to the dance tonight, right?"

"I didn't say that."

"You also didn't say you weren't."

_Well, I went from having about half a page of this to over eight in the course of about three hours today. This was one of the rare chapters that wrote itself and I had to cut it off before it grew too large. I wish I could bottle that kind of production and use it like an elixer when a later chapter inevitably bogs down._

_I guess that's all for now. Let me know what you think about it._

_Thanks, SI_


	10. Chapter 10

The twins made their stealthy dash to Arwin's patio door after checking the area for unwanted eyes before slipping inside silently. Cody pulled the curtain completely across the glass while Zack collapsed unceremoniously in a pile on the couch. Cody shook his head and walked out of the room, returning a few seconds later with a tumbler of milk in each hand. Zack twisted to a partially upright position and took the offered cup.

Cody sat down much more gently and leaned against the couch's arm. He took a sip and watched Zack drain the glass in three gulps and set it on the floor. "Thirsty much?" he asked.

"Thirsty and tired," Zack admitted. "I always forget how much going to the pool wears me out. I feel like I just ran a marathon." He rolled back onto his side and stuck a cushion under his head.

"Me too." They sat in silence for a few minutes and Cody slowly enjoyed his drink. Zack finally broke the quiet with a groan. "What?"

"I just realized that I don't have anything to wear."

"Yeah you do. There's a bunch of clothes in the other room. Underwear, shirts, socks, and shorts."

"I meant for the dance. I'm not wearing any of that stuff. I need to look good." He groaned again.

"You could just wear your jeans and one of Arwin's shirts," Cody said after a second.

"I could what?"

"Jeans are jeans, right? They look just like the jeans from here so you're set on those. Shirt-wise, it's the eighties, Zack. Time of big hair, big cars, and big dreams, so why not big shirts, too? Just roll up the sleeves or something."

"Normally I'd say that is the worst idea in the history of worst ideas but my closet of awesome clothes is a long way away right now so I don't really have a choice." Zack rolled to his feet and padded around the corner. Cody finished his milk before getting up and followed the sounds of hangers sliding across the metal bar. He watched Zack randomly pull shirts out for further inspection before making a wide variety of expressions.

"You know, Arwin has a bunch of shirts that I wouldn't even let you wear in public but there's a few in here that aren't really that bad." He pulled out a simple long-sleeved cream button-down with grey accents and looked it over. "Simple, but very eighties." He looked it over again before hanging it from the door's handle and mumbling something that sounded like _maybe_.

"You could always wear the shirt I was wearing when we came here. I think it looks pretty nice," Cody offered.

"I thought about it," Zack told him, "but if I wore it, you could say that you didn't have anything to wear and use that as your excuse not to go," he said as he went through the shirts again.

"The only real excuse I need is sitting down in the basement right now," Cody told his brother as he leaned against the wall.

"There isn't much I can say to convince you to go with me, is there? I really want you to come."

"I kind of want to go," Cody admitted.

"Then go! We won't stay too late, I promise. I think it's over at 9:30 anyway so it's not like we'll be out all night."

"I'm pretty sure you said we wouldn't stay at the pool all that long, either, and we were there for over four hours."

"In my defense, you never once said we should head home."

"I was having fun and lost track of time."

"Exactly! You'll have more fun tonight, too. Who knows, maybe you'll even get your first kiss tonight."

"What makes you think I haven't already got my first kiss?" Cody asked, his eyebrow arched curiously.

"Because you're my brother, that's why. If you had, trust me, I'd know."

Cody was quiet for a few seconds as he thought and sighed when he reached the decision he didn't expect to make. "I wish I knew how you can always manage to make bad ideas sound good. It's like you put sprinkles on a dog turd and convince me it's ice cream."

"That's really gross and I don't know what to say to that," Zack laughed, "so does that mean you're coming?"

"I can't believe I'm saying this but yes," Cody said softly.

"Great!"

"Once the dance is over, we leave, right? No after-parties?"

"When it's done, we're done. I promise. Besides, it's a little dance out in the middle of nowhere. I don't think that's big enough to have its own after-party."

"I'm just covering all the bases, Zack. If there's the littlest bit of wiggle room, you'll find it."

Zack put on an innocent face. "I'd never do anything like that."

"Uh huh," Cody replied sarcastically. "Of course you wouldn't."

Three hours, two naps, and a meal later, the boys were out the door and on their way to the dance. Zack was wearing Arwin's shirt untucked with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and half the buttons open while Cody wore what he'd arrived in. "We look so good that the girls will be fighting to see who gets to talk to us first, Cody," Zack told his brother as they rounded the corner and sighted the center.

Cody saw the smile on Zack's face and the far away look in his eyes and didn't want to begin to imagine what Zack might be thinking about. "Easy, Tiger," he said through a grin. They crossed the road and walked across the parking lot, dodging cars dropping off eager children as they went.

"There is enough hair spray in here to drown Boston," Zack whispered as they walked through the doors. Cody snickered quietly as they passed two little Madonnas with mile-high bangs. "Did you see their hair? They're going to have to use a chisel to get all that out when they get home."

"You shouldn't be making fun of all your girlfriends like that," Cody said and elbowed Zack playfully in the side.

"Speaking of my girlfriends, do you see the girls from the pool anywhere?" he craned his neck and tried to look everywhere at once.

"I really don't even know what they look like," Cody told him. "I only saw them from across the pool, remember?"

"That is going to make it a little harder," Zack admitted. They walked down a hallway in a crowd, following large poster board arrows pointing to another set of open doors. They could hear a mix of young voices and music from the room and saw pulsating colored lights reflecting from the polished floor.

The room normally spent its days as a basketball gym, the boys noticed almost immediately. Along one sideline near mid-court, a table had been set up with audio equipment flanked by half a dozen large floor speakers on each side. A man with an extremely long earring feathered earring was picking through a box of cassettes.

"Are those actual record players?" Zack asked as they strolled by.

"Believe it or not, yes they are," Cody told him.

"Wow. We've got to bring some of those back with us so all the hipster kids can finally play the records they buy."

"We'll see about that," Cody laughed as they passed the table.

Under one basket was another table loaded with bowls of punch and coolers of ice cold soda. _More Citrus Drop, _Zack noticed with a grin. They ladled themselves each a drink into a paper cup and wandered away, their eyes roaming across the gym as it steadily filled up.

The other baseline had a few dozen chairs and a handful of tables and the boys ended up there after doing a circuit around the gym. Cody's mind was spinning as he saw and heard things he'd only heard his mother talk about wistfully whenever he mistakenly asked her about how it was when she was growing up. He smothered a laugh when a girl younger than he was stumbled by in suicide heels.

"What's so funny?" Zack asked quietly.

"The fact that we're actually here and that this is actually real," Cody whispered, "everything seemed like we were on a movie set until now, you know? We are one hundred percent in the eighties."

Zack nodded and started to say something but stopped when the DJ picked up the mic and drowned out any and all conversation with a blast of high-pitched feedback. "Sorry about that," the man said sheepishly as he stepped away from the speakers.

The twins listened to him thank everyone for coming and hope they all have a blast and other things. "Let's keep it clean and have fun," he said before turning the mic off and starting the music and lights back up. Zack shook his head as the opening bars of _Girls Just Wanna Have Fun _filled the room.

"You want to get up and see if we can't find ourselves a girl that just wants to have fun?" he asked in Cody's ear.

"Not just yet," his brother replied. "Let me finish my drink and we'll see."

"Suit yourself," Zack shrugged and got up, pitching his empty cup in the nearest garbage can.

Cody watched as Zack seamlessly melded into the crowd of young teens and tweens and was more envious than he would ever admit. _This is why I shouldn't have come, _he said to himself. _I could have the same amount of fun sitting back at Arwin's house listening to the radio. I'm not the social butterfly Zack is at all. _He slouched a bit further in his chair and sipped on his punch, feeling guiltier and guiltier that he was here instead of working on the broken time machine with each passing minute.

El Debarge, Toto, Mr. Mister, Genesis, Starship, and Falco all played and Cody had lost sight of his brother as he wondered how he had allowed himself to come. He got up to refill his punch and returned to his seat to watch the crowd, telling himself that he's get up and try to let himself have a little fun when a song he liked came on.

It came and went, some silly little song he knew neither the name nor the band but remembered singing in the car with his mother, but he stayed in his seat, allowing himself to tap his toes to the rhythm of the night.

"Hey Cody," Zack said loudly and Cody jumped.

"Oh, hey. You snuck up on me." He turned to Zack and saw him surrounded by a small harem of girls.

"It wasn't too hard. You were looking off into space again. Anyway, this is Sherry and this is Samantha," the girls waved demurely at him, "and we were wondering if you'd like to join us on the dance floor."

"I don't know..." Cody said, almost instantly intimidated by the presence of the girls.

"Come on, Cody," Zack implored. "I can't exactly dance with both of them, can I? Well, technically, yes, I can, but it wouldn't be fair to them, would it?" Cody saw the girls look at his brother and knew that if they were Eskimos, Zack could sell them ice cubes with his smoothness.

"Well..."

"I knew you'd see my point." Zack reached down and snatched the cup from Cody's hand and drained its contents in one quick motion. "Let's go." He crumpled it and kicked it under a chair while Cody stood. With a steering hand on his brother's shoulder, Zack led the small group back out near mid-court and the mass of moving bodies. Cody's pulse tripled as he felt a small, soft hand find his as they walked. He looked over at Samantha and hoped his face wasn't as red as it felt.

"I don't think I've ever actually danced with anyone other than my mom," he admitted as they found a patch of open floor.

"That's okay," she said with a smile, "I still think you're cute. Just do what comes natural."

_Run! _was what felt natural but he forced himself to stay and try to be unawkward as possible. He parroted Samantha's moves and smiled an unforced smile when she smiled at him.

_Maybe this isn't so bad after all_, he thought to himself as the songs went on somewhere in the background. Slowly but surely Cody found a bit of rhythm and no longer felt like he stuck out like a sore thumb.

"Okay, we're going to slow it down a little now," the DJ said, "here's a song from the group Berlin that's perfect for getting a little closer."

Cody's mind panicked and a lump the size of Berlin formed in his throat but Samantha took his hand so he couldn't flee. "Never danced with your mom to a song like this, have you?" she laughed and it sounded like angels singing to Cody.

"Nuhh-no," he stuttered.

"Just put your hands on my waist like this," she said as she placed his hands properly, "and I'll put my hands on your shoulders like this." Cody felt her hands softly on his hot skin.

"Now what?"

"Now we just move side to side a little," Samantha said and they did. Cody noticed how difficult it was to look away from her eyes at this close of a distance.

"This isn't too hard," he said after they'd swayed to and fro for a few seconds.

"No, it's not. Do you know why this is my favorite way to dance?" she whispered in his ear.

"No, why?"

"Because I can do this." Samantha leaned forward and kissed him.

Cody's brain temporarily disengaged before slipping back into gear a few heartbeats later. He saw fireworks and explosions behind his eyelids and felt like he was too big for his clothes. He felt light, he felt heavy, he felt warm, his chest felt tight, he felt like he never wanted it to end.

"Wow," was all he could say when they finally broke the kiss after what seemed like an hour. Samantha laid her head on his shoulder for the rest of the song and the scent of strawberries filled his nose. Cody hoped the grin that he could feel plastered on his face wasn't too incredibly stupid.

All too soon for him the song was over and Zack and his girl were at their side. "C'mon, buddy, the girls are going to the ladies' room and we're going to get us all drinks.

"Oh...okay," Cody said as he tried to remove his hands from Samantha's waist. They seemed to be welded in place but he managed just as she ran a finger down his flank. Cody shivered as they parted.

"The punch is over this way," Zack said after Cody hadn't moved. "Hello?" he waved his fingers in front of his brother's eyes. "Anybody in there?"

"What? Oh, right. Punch," he mumbled when the girls were finally out of sight. He looked back at Zack just in time to see the side of his mouth twitch and give birth to a huge grin.

"I think congratulations are in order," Zack laughed as they started towards the drink table.

"Why?"

"Because, you big doofus, you have lipstick on your face." Zack put an arm around Cody's shoulder as they walked.

"She was wearing lipstick?"

"Well, one of you was. So how was it?"

Cody could only shake his head in reply. "It was awesome."

"Good. And you're welcome."

"Welcome? For what?"

"For getting you out of that stupid chair you'd been sitting in for almost an hour."

"Oh, right. Thanks, Zack."

"Not a problem. That's what brothers are for."

The girls returned a short while later and the group retired to one of the tables in the corner, talking as well as they could over the general din of the room. Cody felt distinctly light-headed each time Samantha leaned in close to say something but didn't mind in the slightest.

"I've got to give back some of the punch we've been drinking," Zack said abruptly during their conversation.

"Do you want me to go with you?" Cody asked as Zack pushed his chair back and stood.

"No, I think I can handle it on my own. I figured out how to work a zipper last week, remember? You stay here and keep these lovely ladies entertained. I'll be right back."

"Okay," Cody replied after Samantha gave him another of her heart-melting smiles. Any thoughts of the buddy system vanished from his mind instantly.

Zack worked his way through the small crowd that was milling about around the doors and left the gym, heading for the red-lit _men _sign above an alcove a few dozen steps down the hall. He pushed the door open and stepped inside, swallowing a grimace a few feet later when he squished through a puddle. "That better have been water," he said as he passed a line of stalls and headed for the row of urinals along the far wall and chose one far enough away from the other two boys to satisfy the Guy Code.

Zack only partially listened to the talk in the bathroom as he focused on taking care of his business. He shook off and zipped up only to turn around and see a closed fist coming right at him and land right above the bridge of his nose.

"Shit!" he exclaimed as his eyes immediately began to water.

"Told you I'd get you, new kid," a blurry face taunted and Zack recognized the voice at once. "I've been waiting to get you by yourself all night." He wiped his eyes clear and was staring at Flock of Seagulls and his little sidekick. His gaze shot around their end of the bathroom and he realized that they had him cornered. _Dammit. _

"It's a good thing you hit like a girl or that might have actually hurt," Zack lied. Poorly thrown sucker punch or not, he already had a monster of a headache forming behind his eyes and could feel blood trickling down both the back of his throat and his upper lip after he sniffed. _Wonderful._

"I'll show you who's the girl," Aaron said menacingly.

"I bet you say that to all the boys you try to pick up in bathrooms, don't you?" Zack said without thinking. His body had switched into autopilot and his mouth now ran without a censor. The smaller bully, Toby, if Zack remembered what Curtis had called him right, looked like he was prepping himself for a lunge but a well-timed glare made him step back and reconsider his actions. _This would be a great time for a chaperone to walk in here and stop this before it goes any further, _Zack thought quickly.

"The only thing that's going to get picked up in here is your body when I'm done with it," the bully said as he raised his fists again.

"Aren't you at least going to buy me dinner first?" Zack mocked and Aaron charged blindly in with his arms flailing. He collided with Zack chest to chest and Zack was pushed back against the wall, the back of his head bouncing off the painted cinder block.

His ears rang and his vision trebled momentarily before righting itself. He felt furious blows raining all around him, most thankfully missing, before an arc of warm lightning erupted on his cheek. _Did he just cut me_? Zack wondered absently as smaller hands began hitting him in the side. Zack got hit again and felt the trickle from his nose turn into a torrent.

Zack landed a good clip behind Aaron's ear but it didn't seem to faze the kid in the least as he was still swinging wildly so Zack prepared to instantly end the fight before one of them really got hurt. Especially him. He shoved the kid back a half step to make a little space and brought his knee up with as much force as he could possibly muster.

The results were spectacular. The hail of punches instantly ceased as the boy's hands dropped to his wounded crotch. Aaron fell limply to his knees and then onto his side, directly into the pool of foul liquid that lay beneath the urinal, Zack noticed, as he began to make the wretched sounds of dry-heaving. Toby, eyes wide with shock, backed off into the corner as quickly as he could.

"Look," Zack said to the injured bully, "I don't know what your problem is with me or Curtis but it's done, got it?" Aaron groaned something that could have been a yes. He turned his gaze to the smaller boy who had suddenly contracted a bad case of the shakes. To Zack, he looked like he was about to make his own puddle.

"What about me?" the boy croaked and Zack could only shake his head at how pathetic he sounded without his leader beside him.

"You," Zack told him, "are lucky you aren't a year or two older." Zack wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and slung away a few drops of blood.

"You aren't going to hit me?"

"No. Unlike your _buddy_," Zack put as much scorn as he could into the word, "I don't go around picking on kids smaller than me. You really need to find a new friend." Zack walked over to the sinks to look in the mirror and didn't like what he saw. He peered behind himself in the glass and saw Aaron still curled up in a little wet ball and decided that it was probably a very good idea if he and Cody made a hasty exit before any adults, especially the police, got involved. Zack grabbed a paper towel from the dispenser and wiped away what blood he could from his face and left the room, glad that the lights in this end of the building were low to add to the party atmosphere.

"What happened to you?" Cody gasped when Zack returned to their table.

"There was a little incident in the bathroom. Cody, we really need to go."

"What incident? Who-"

"We need to go _now, _Cody. I'll tell you about it later. Ladies," Zack said and gave a suave bow, "I'm sure we'll see you again soon." He pulled Cody along in his wake as he left. Cody waved and smiled at Samantha before he was dragged out of sight.

"Okay, so what the heck happened back there?" Cody asked once they'd turned down a residential street and put some distance between the rec center and themselves.

"Remember Aaron? The boy that punched Curtis the other day?"

"Yeah?"

"He jumped me in the bathroom. Him and his little toady."

"Are you okay? Let me take a look at you."

"I'm fine for now," Zack said as they continued walking. "He just bloodied my nose and scratched my cheek or something. Compared to him I'm golden."

"I knew I should have gone in there with you. I knew it."

Zack just shrugged as he unbuttoned the rest of the shirt and pulled it off. He wiped the remaining drops of blood from his face before angling their course to a garbage can at the end of a driveway. He deposited the red-streaked shirt in the bin and they continued their journey home.

_Finally. This chapter is nothing like what I had planned to write but I think it turned out okay after a million and a half rewrites. Oh well. I'm starting to wind this story down but it's still got a little life left in it. Let me know what you think._

_SI_


	11. Chapter 11

Zack was standing in front of the bathroom mirror wrapped in a towel and wiping the steam away from the glass with a sock. He got a clear view of the cleaned up damage he'd received as well as a glimpse at Cody's startled face behind him. "Yeah, he got me a little better than I thought at first," he admitted as he turned his head and saw the thin cut that arced from slightly under his cheekbone to just short of his ear.

"You've got a little cut on the back of your head, too," Cody told him.

"Huh?"

"Right here," Cody said, turning around and pointed to his own head. Zack found the spot and hissed as he pressed on it.

"I guess that's from when my head hit the wall."

"You didn't mention that part before."

"I forgot about it. A lot happened in like twenty seconds."

"You might have a concussion."

"I don't have a concussion, Cody. I'm just a little beat up, that's all. Besides, I'm still a thousand percent better right now than Aaron is. His kids are going to feel the knee I gave him."

"Still. I think you should take it easy for the rest of the night just in case. Don't move around too much or anything."

"You're smothering me again, Mom," Zack joked. "Like I said, Cody, I'm fine. But," he said as he felt an interruption bubbling up inside his brother, "I'll crash out on the couch for a while and watch what they call tv here if it'll put your mind at ease while you're in the basement messing with the box."

"You're sure you'll be okay while I'm down there?"

"Yes. If you ask me again, though, I'm going to go out and run a marathon or something. Go figure out how to get us home already." He gently shooed Cody out door.

"If you need anything-"

"I'll yell. Don't worry about me." He turned and headed back toward the bedrooms and half-expected Cody to follow him but his brother had retreated to the den after an appraising glance. Zack heard the basement door squeak open as he began drying himself.

Cody descended the steps and flicked the light switch at the bottom, squinting as the fluorescents in the ceiling came to life. He stood with his hands on his hips as he examined the box from a few paces and felt a wave of anxiety wash over him. Cody exhaled and forced himself to the table. He gingerly picked the box up and looked it over, paying attention to all the spaces he thought were screw holes.

"I can do this," he muttered as he put the box back down. "Piece of cake." Cody went over to Arwin's toolbox and gave it a gentle shove to get it rolling over to the table. He opened the lid and pulled out a set of screwdrivers and set them close by before spending the next minute moving the toolbox around until he had it exactly where he wanted it. He had wiped the area of the ping pong table he was going to use clean four times before he chided himself.

"Quit stalling, Cody. Open the box already," his inner voice said, sounding remarkably like Zack. He shooed the voice away and picked the smallest screwdriver from the set and slid it in the first hole. He twisted the handle and jumped slightly when the screw loosened. He let out the breath he didn't know he'd been holding when the box didn't suddenly crumble after his first action.

Twelve screws, meticulously set aside in a copy of their previous positions, marked his progress after almost ten minutes. Cody wiped his sleeve across his forehead before gently flipping the box right side up. He put a hand on each side of the device and ever so slightly began to pull the lid upwards. One edge moved instantly but the other hung on and Cody ground his teeth under a frown. He gave the top piece a little twist and it popped loose.

Cody didn't know quite what he was expecting to be under the time machine's hood but he wasn't disappointed in its complexity after taking his first look. Wires and leads and tons of little pieces for which he had no names were everywhere. He pushed his hair back with both hands and mouthed the word _wow_.

"Okay, let's do this," he said as he powered on his phone and took a picture of the way the machine was assembled from various angles. Once satisfied he'd taken enough to be able to put it back together, Cody set his phone aside and began meticulously checking each and every connection he could see, hoping to find the problem nothing more than an easily fixable loose wire.

As he poked and prodded the various parts, his mind wandered. _This is a good place to be doing this. Zack is upstairs and quiet, there's no loud noises coming from the street outside, no headlights glaring through the blocked-up windows... _He looked up after the last thought and set his gaze on the windows. Why were they blocked? Cody looked around and saw nothing out of the ordinary in the basement. Just the random junk that accumulated in nearly every basement he'd ever seen. Nothing worth hiding away from the world. So why were they blocked?

Cody stepped away from the box and peered around the room again. _Maybe there is something worth hiding down here, _he thought, _and Arwin has hidden it away. _He looked at the box guiltily for a few seconds before his curiosity got the better of him and he began his search. He repeated their steps from before but took more care as he examined boxes and bags and under various things.

Time passed and Cody had worked his way around the whole room and found nothing. _Hmmmm..._He glanced up at the ceiling tiles but none looked any different from the others or out of place. Cody pulled a large and small box to the center of the room and used them as a step stool to climb up. He pushed the tile overhead up and off its bracket and poked his head into the darkness. Unable to see anything, Cody climbed down and grabbed his phone to use as a make-shift flashlight. He climbed back up and powered it on and found nothing but spider webs and dead insects and what might possibly be a snake skin from one end of the crawlspace to the other. He shivered and shrunk away from the dried skin.

"There has to be something here," he said as he climbed down. "Blocking the windows out doesn't make any sense if there isn't something to hide. Not that much of what Arwin does makes sense anyway," he admitted. Cody crossed his arms over his chest defiantly in the center of the room, not quite ready to admit defeat. There was something down here, he could _feel_ it, but couldn't figure out where it was.

"Where are you?" he asked quietly. "There's nothing but garbage from wall to...wall!" A grin etched itself across his face. "The walls." He moved to the nearest wall and rapped his knuckles against it and listened as the dull thud echoed back to his ears. He frowned momentarily before returning to the toolbox and selecting a heavy wrench. Cody went back to the previous spot and hit it again, memorizing the sound it made.

Around the basement he went, whacking the wrench on the wall every foot or so, hoping that the next strike would make a slightly different sound. Cody had rounded the second corner when he heard the basement door open.

"Cody, what in the hell are you doing to the box?" Zack called down.

"I'm not hitting the box, Zack."

"Then what are you doing?"

"Looking for something."

"Could you maybe look for whatever it is a little quieter? I was just about asleep."

"I'll be quieter, I promise. I'll...I'm almost done looking."

"Well, keep on doing whatever it is you're doing, I guess," Zack told him before closing the door. Cody could easily imagine Zack at the top of the stairs shaking his head like he'd done so many times before.

Cody suddenly felt foolish for wasting so much time and he hit the wall with much less enthusiasm than he had before Zack interrupted him. He should have been working on the box, not pounding a wrench on walls. He'd complained for the last few days about needing to try to fix it instead of palling around with Dad and here he was not doing it when he had the chance. How much time had he wasted doing this? Probably at least an hour. Maybe even- _thock._

Cody's mind instantly stopped its recriminations when he heard the hollow return from his last strike. He stepped a few paces back and tapped the wall and listened before hitting the previous spot again. "I knew it!" he said, his earlier thoughts of wasted time gone. Cody ran his fingers along the painted cinder blocks, feeling for any difference.

Cody stepped close to the wall squinted as he tried to locate a seam between the blocks and smiled when he finally did. He stepped back and whistled at the flushness. "I'd never have seen it if I hadn't been three inches away. Now the question is 'how do I open it?'" His hands found his hips as he looked at where the wall met the ceiling. Nothing looked odd but he ran his hands along the joint to be sure and nearly jumped out of his skin when he found a barely recessed button.

"Gotcha," Cody said as a latch opened somewhere behind the wall, followed half a second later by a four-foot section of the wall swinging open slightly. He dug his fingers into the side of the hidden door and pulled, his mind awhirl with what Arwin could have hidden away inside. _Maybe there's a spare time machine in here. Or maybe even robots! _his mind randomly whispered as the door fully opened.

Some light from the basement spilled in but Cody fumbled around on the wall just inside the door for a switch anyway and two bulbs overhead flashed on. There were no robots or visible time machines but there was a cheap wooden desk taking up most of one side of the small room. He was looking at the empty shelves that lined most of the rest of the space when his eyes jumped back to the desk.

"What do we have here? A laptop?" he asked softly as he approached the desk. Cody opened the laptop's lid and saw a blinking blue light on the keyboard. "It has power." He pulled the laptop forward and saw its power cord trailing down behind the desk and out to the right. He stepped to the side expecting to see only an outlet but was surprised to see a bulky metal safe sitting beside the desk as well. He squatted down to examine it but stood back up after deciding it was time to get Zack.

"Zack," he said as he poked his head out from the basement door only to see his brother unsurprisingly laying on the couch in his underwear, "you aren't going to believe what I found."

"You found out how to fix the box?" Zack yawned.

"No."

"I believe that."

"That's not what I meant. I found a secret room in the basement."

"No you didn't."

"Come look." Cody motioned to the steps and Zack got up. "Maybe you could put some pants on first, though."

"Nope," Zack said with finality and slid past Cody and headed down the steps. Cody rolled his eyes and followed.

"See? I told you," he said as Zack stood in the doorway of the small room.

"You didn't touch anything, did you?"

"Well, a little. I opened the laptop up but I didn't press any keys."

"What about the safe?" Zack asked as he stood over it.

"No, why?"

"Because," Zack said, instantly going from couch potato to business mode, "if he took the time to hide this stuff, he might have rigged it."

"To blow up?"

"Maybe. Probably not, though. More likely to just erase whatever is on the computer or set fire to whatever's in the safe. I saw it happen in a few movies." Cody swallowed a snort and only nodded his head sagely.

"Should we try it?" he asked after Zack looked the computer over.

"I don't see why not. What's Mom always say? Nothing ventured nothing gained or whatever? It might not even be passworded."

"Even if it is, I might know it," Cody said proudly. "I was helping him in his office a few months ago and he tried to sign into his computer but entered the password in the user field."

"My brother, the unintentional spy," Zack snickered.

"I wasn't looking on purpose! I just happened to glance over at the wrong time."

"It'll be the right time if you can get us into this computer, Cody." He turned the keyboard so it was facing his brother and stepped out of the way. Cody pressed the blue button and it stayed lit. The sound of a drive spinning up filled the room and the blue log-in screen blinked onto the monitor.

"Here goes," Cody said as he rapidly typed and partially filled the white box. He pressed enter and Arwin's desktop popped up.

"What was his password?" Zack asked as a handful of icons slowly appeared.

"I'm not telling you!"

"Really?" Zack said sarcastically and shook his head. "What do you think is in there?" he asked as Cody began digging through the computer.

"Hopefully none of the cartoon animal porn I happened to find on yours," Cody replied, unable to help himself.

"How many times have you been on my computer?" Zack asked and Cody could see nearly every inch of his brother's skin blushing deeply from of the corner of his eye.

"One too many," he said amid a flurry of keystrokes and trackpad clicks.

"I was curious."

"Mmmhmm..."

"I probably should have hidden it better."

"Mmmhmm," Cody repeated, not looking up from the screen.

Zack went quiet and watched as Cody burrowed deeper into the computer. Windows popped up and just as quickly vanished. "What are you looking for?" he finally asked.

"I'm not completely sure, Zack. I think this is one of those cases when I'll know it when I see it."

"He should have saved us the trouble and just left a folder called _the stuff Cody's looking for _on the desktop."

"Aha!" Cody said after a few seconds. "He did make that folder but he called it _scores _and buried it deep inside the operating system. See?" Cody stood back and let Zack have a look at the screen. Six folders were centered in the screen, four labeled with one of the four major sports and another two with _ncaaf _and _ncaam_.

"It's like the bottom of the screen on ESPN," Zack said.

"Any particular folder you want to see first?" Cody asked and Zack shrugged his indifference.

"He's got every season in there!" Zack exclaimed after his brother clicked on the folder titled _nba_. Cody clicked a few more times at random and eventually came up with the complete box score from a Houston/San Antonio game from March of 1998. "Holy crap."

"No kidding," Cody agreed. "Looks like he took your idea of sports betting to a whole new level."

"Didn't you say that things would be likely to change the longer we, or Arwin, are here?"

"They might if the two of us or him make a big enough splash. Otherwise, things might just continue on like they were supposed to. Or did. Whatever." Cody shrugged and tried to not think about the complexities of altering the timeline.

"If it ends up working like that and we end up being stuck here, I'm never getting a job in my life," Zack announced. "We'll be stinking rich." Cody nodded his agreement.

"So should we try to crack the safe tonight or wait until tomorrow?" Cody asked as he pushed the laptop away.

"Are you feeling lucky, Cody?"

"Not particularly but I was hoping that maybe that friend of yours might have taught you a thing or two about breaking into a safe when he wasn't too busy breaking into houses."

Zack ignored the slight dig at his friend. "No, sorry. We'll have to do this the old fashioned way unless you happen to have an acetylene torch or some dynamite."

"What would he use as a combination he wouldn't forget?" Cody wondered. "His birthday? Maybe his phone number?"

"Do you _know_ his birthday or phone number?"

"Yes and yes."

"And why do you know these things?" Zack asked with a grin.

"His number is in my phone and we went to his birthday party last year, remember?"

"Like I'm supposed to remember when Arwin's birthday is? I'd probably forget when yours was if it wasn't the same as mine." Cody laughed and retrieved his phone. He leaned against the desk while supplying the necessary numbers.

"No luck," Zack said after he tried both sets of numbers forwards and backwards. Zack sat Indian-style against the far wall as he tried to think of what else to use.

"Mom's birthday," Cody said abruptly and Zack agreed immediately.

"That's it. I know it is," he said and leaned forward. "Mom was born in May, right?" he asked as his hand hovered over the dial.

"May fourth, nineteen-"

"I know how old she is, I just didn't remember the date." He spun the dial and grabbed the handle. "Here goes nothing." A _kachunk _came from inside the safe and Zack pulled the door open an inch with a smile. He scooted back a bit and pushed it open all the way and whistled.

"What's in there?" Cody asked as he tried to look over his brother's shoulder.

"A bunch of papers, some little notebook, and lots and lots of money."

"Seriously?" Cody squatted down behind Zack and saw stacks of green rubber banded together. "Are they real?"

"They look pretty real to me," Zack said as he rifled through a stack of tens. "Smell real, too," he added after giving the stack a sniff.

"How much do you think there is?"

"I'd guess at least a couple of grand," Zack told him. "Look through this if you want." He absently handed Cody the small pile of documents and the notebook while he stared lovingly at the piles of cash. Cody saw the same expression on his brother's face that was usually reserved for double scoop chocolate sundaes.

"Car title, deed to the house, insurance information..." Cody said as he went through the stack. He stopped when he found a bank statement and his eyes raced down the sheet and came to rest on the last set of numbers. "Jeez, Arwin is loaded," he whistled.

"Wow," Zack mumbled after Cody showed him the paper. "Makes sense, though. I think even Arwin could manage to win the lottery if he had the winning numbers sitting in a computer. What's in the notebook?"

"I'm not sure," Cody told him as he set the stack of documents on the desk and opened it. He was silent for a few seconds as he looked it over. "Holy shit," he whispered.

Zack looked away from the money instantly. Anything that could make his brother curse had to be important. "What is it?"

"It looks like Arwin has a timetable of Mom's life."

"What?" Zack stood and Cody shared the discovery with him.

"Look. He has dates and highlights or whatever you want to call them of what Mom did or will do." Cody skimmed down a few lines and pointed. "February 1986, moved into house on Greenwood. I'm pretty sure we walked past a Greenwood on the way to the dance earlier today."

"We did," Zack muttered as he read down the page. "What's he doing? Stalking Mom?" he asked with a mixture of bewilderment and anger.

"Looks like it. Keeping tabs on her at least."

"You know, Arwin is going to be lucky if I don't beat him half to death when we get back. Messing with Dad isn't as bad since he's, well, Dad. But Mom? No way. No one gets to do that." Zack's earlier cash-induced smile had been replaced with a scowl. "How'd he even get this stuff?" he turned the page and saw information from his mother's high school years on the second page and noticed their birth amidst a bunch of other things on the third.

"A bunch of it could be from just asking the right questions," Cody replied, easily seeing Arwin filing away every slightly relevant bit of a conversation with his mother away in his mind. "The rest of it? Data mining her Facebook, maybe? Public records? I really don't know."

"All I know is that he's lucky he isn't here right now." Zack leaned against the wall and crossed his arms over his bare chest as another tired yawn momentarily broke up the thunderhead that was etched on his face.

"Go to bed, Zack. This will all be here in the morning," Cody told him after a second yawn chased the first one. "You need to rest just in case you have a concussion."

"You coming too?"

"Not quite yet. I'm going to try to do a little more work on the box before I head upstairs."

Zack nodded. "Don't stay up too late, Cody. You're going to go out and get us breakfast in the morning."

"I am?"

"Yep, I want an Egg McMuffin or three tomorrow. Assuming they exist now," Zack added.

"Then why don't you go out and get them after you wake up?"

"Because I might have a concussion and need my rest," Zack said with a sly grin as he turned and walked out of the small room. Cody shook his head and couldn't help but chuckle as his brother left before returning to the time machine and picking up the screwdriver.

According to his phone, almost two hours had passed when Cody finally put the tools aside for the night and rubbed his eyes. He sighed and tried to not to dwell on the disappointment of coming up with no solid leads as to why they couldn't go home.

"Maybe I'm just too tired to see it," he said to himself as he spread a garbage bag over the partially disassembled machine. "I'll wake up in the morning and I'll see the reason it's not working right away." He stretched and gave the box one last look before walking up the stairs. He rubbed his eyes one last time and slid into the small section of the bed Zack hadn't taken for himself and was asleep almost before his head hit the pillow.

Cody's bladder woke him the next morning and he rolled out of bed quickly. He saw through crusty eyes that Zack was once again already up and out of the room. "Why can't you do that during school?" he mumbled to himself as he paced to the bathroom and took care of business. Crisis averted, he flushed and heard his brother's voice as he walked out into the living room.

"Okay, thanks anyway, bye," Zack said as he hung the phone back on the wall. "Well look who's finally awake. I was beginning to wonder if I was going to to have to settle for lunch instead of breakfast." Cody glanced at the clock on the wall and saw it was barely after nine.

"Who were you talking to?" he asked as he poured himself a glass of juice.

"Good morning to you, too," Zack laughed. "I was talking to Curtis' mom. I called over there to see how his game went yesterday but she said he left a little while ago on his bike. I guess he was as bored with the lame cartoons as I was."

"Did they win?"

"Nope, she said they got pounded pretty good." Zack headed for the den and Cody followed once he'd finished his juice and put the glass in the sink, arriving in the room just in time to see Zack flop down on the couch.

"How's your head?" Cody asked as he sat down gracefully by his brother's feet.

"I think I'm cured," Zack answered, "but you should still go get breakfast just in case. I put a twenty on the table for you." Cody tried to not smile at his brother's persistence but failed.

"You have such a one-track mind, Zack," he said.

"Get on the train, Cody. Next stop, Hungertown."

"Okay, okay, I'll go. I'd ask if you want to come with me but I'm pretty sure that would be a _no _since you'd have to actually put on clothes." Cody gestured to Zack's underwear and rolled his eyes.

"Hey, you should feel lucky I'm not walking around naked since Mom isn't here to see me."

"Trust me, Zack, for that I am _eternally_ grateful. More than you'll ever know." Cody reached a hand over the side of the couch and groped around until he found his shoes. "I have to say that I never figured you to be an aspiring nudist," he told his brother as he laced up first one shoe and then the other.

"Who knew?" Zack joked as he moved around to get more comfortable.

"Not me." Cody stood up and retrieved the money from the table and shoved it deep into one of his shorts' pocket. "Just don't go from aspiring to full-time before I get back or I'll eat your McMuffins."

"Don't worry, just go before they stop serving breakfast."

"I can get there in like fifteen minutes," Cody said as he walked to the patio door. "That's plenty of time." He pulled the curtain back to scout out the backyard and dropped the first f-bomb in his entire life. Coasting to a stop on his bike a scant five feet away and looking directly at the door was his father. Cody immediately followed his first f-bomb with a second as Curtis' eyes widened instantly with surprise and recognition.

_Sorry, guys and gals. It's been a crazy summer and I haven't been home much at all to work on this story. Summer is winding down now (as is this story), and it's looking like I'm going to have my free time back again to finish it up sooner rather than later._

_Thanks for sticking with me on this and let me know what you think of the sudden turn of events at the end._

_SI_


End file.
